#elder-scrolls-general-chat

1 messages · Page 23 of 1

scenic spade
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I don't know man. Imagine being the physically gifted, best trained Orc and hogging all of the women all to yourself. That sounds like paradise bro...

Just be brave enough to face a rival horny male Orc in 1vs1 combat any day and you should be good to go.

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Is this in lore or are you just memeing?

Well anyway... Snow elves are now the cave falmer. Other than that, they got eradicated by the Nords.

Honestly, the main things that intrigue me in Elder Scrolls lore are the re-surfacing of the Ansei and Dwemer who are still alive. Everything else is trivial to me.

I appreciate the player character overhearing the Companions of Jorrvaskr about their training. But there's not enough of it. I just want a faction where we gain buffs when our character weight trains with a bunch of swole gym bros. Put their gym by the lumber mill or something. Metal casted power racks, dumbbells, and barbells.

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Non-athlete gamers underestimate the need for sophisticated weight training programs and state of the art equipment in order to achieve even half of the physical capabilities of the warriors in Tamriel.

feral viper
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The Snow Elves are the victims of Atmoran colonialism and revisionist history. Plain and simple. And we are unlikely to ever see more besides padding Nord egos to make Elves the bad guys again.

Because that's basically the only narratives we get.

nimble pond
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Yea I like the magic aspect. I'd prob want to be a Breton living in the lush forests of Valenwood and conjure up sweetrolls all day. When I'm feeling adventurous, go out on the boat around Tamrielic Islands. Except the Sload ones. Avoid those.

feral viper
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At best, well get some story that plugs the gaping holes in the Nordic narrative to reinforce their victim complex.

primal olive
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avoid the reach

nimble pond
scenic spade
primal olive
feral viper
nimble pond
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I had same response. I'm like "Bruh, why do you tell me this crap, M'aiq?"

primal olive
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nah but fr snow elves can definitely appear again in small clusters, id like to see that (ofc our biggest example is Gelebor and Vyrthur and they describe how their small settlement eventually failed, not all would have that fate and it's possible others still exist)

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that and Bethesda just said that so they can do something later with snow elves if they want to lmfao

scenic spade
feral viper
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Prepare to be disappointed. Even when we do get Elven representatives popping up, it's mostly just to admit 'Yeah dude, we were horrible people. We totally deserved to be exterminated'.

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Which is all kinds of red flags

primal olive
scenic spade
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Meeting Gelebor for the first time was so surreal for me.

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Hey man, the Dawnguard content (vanilla) is just amazing overall. Not gonna lie.

primal olive
feral viper
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But once again, this has turned to story and setting, and I'm falling into old habits which given my current opinion, only leads to toxic input on such things.

So I'm gonna just wander off until the topic is something gameplay or mechanical.

scenic spade
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In my PS3 completionist playthrough, I left Serana in the Dawnguard fort. She's supposed to be a replacement for the dead Dawnguard guy who died fighting in Volkihar. My head Canon is that she'll help keep.the place alive and running.

primal olive
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tes without the lore is essentially a husk lol

nimble pond
feral viper
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And with the lore it is a husk.

The value now, IMO, only stems from Skyrim being the best extant foundation for a paradigm shifting RPG. The world doesn't matter, the game does.

primal olive
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Orsimer are an interesting people, their god cursed by Boethiah, changing both them and the Velothi people into new races

primal olive
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without worldbuilding it wouldn't even exist

scenic spade
# nimble pond Have you seen the Orc women? 🤢 That underbite tho..

What I would love is Nords and Imperials living in an Orcish society... Now that would be heaven. Sexy, blonde viking women being your wives as long as you are the strongest and most skilled warrior in the tribe. And then the Imperial (latinas) are there to add to your harem.

feral viper
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Horrible takes are positions that cannot be supported with argumentation and evidence.

I'm not going to go into all of either, because it borders on breaking this channels rules.

Beyond saying, if I thought Fallout or Starfield offered a better foundation for genre defining RPGs, I'd be down there instead.

scenic spade
primal olive
scenic spade
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The main reason I like them are their physical DNA (they're the biggest) and their simple structure that promotes survival of the fittest. But I feel sorry for them for worshiping a looked-down upon god.

primal olive
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why do you think they're in small settlements and Orsinium gets sacked lol

sly inlet
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How is ESO if I don't want to catch a spending addiction? (I hate spending money and want to have fun without a subscription)

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Also does it have the bloat of typical mmos or is it more like FO76

feral viper
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Depends what you're looking for.

It's a decent enough MMO, right up there (IMO( with FF14 and WoW.

It's lore and writing is almost universally better than either Oblivion or Skyrim, despite the fact I think most of it is still bad.

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It has a lot to do base game, and is probably more than worth that initial purchase if you only want that.

sly inlet
spare anchor
feral viper
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Lots of people like the lore. I do not. So your mileage may vary.

sly inlet
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Is it more or less you will be okay without the bag as long as you don't keep every single item you get?

feral viper
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Oh yeah.

sly inlet
feral viper
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I will say, despite ultimately basically hating 90% of the lore in it, and it's most recent arc being what effectively killed the setting for me, I STILL think I got my moneys worth out of playing it.

sly inlet
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I wouldn't expect marvelizing either btw given they are paths NOT taken yknow?

feral viper
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No, Ithelia just cemented the most simplistic and childish take on The Multiverse, the ongoing popularity of which makes me literally angry.

So many amazing interpretations of the concept, and everyone goes with the freaking Sliders one. And it was old and tired THEN.

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It's like the Matrix nonsense all over again.

sly inlet
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Wdym sliders?

primal olive
spare anchor
primal olive
feral viper
# sly inlet Wdym sliders?

90s tv show about jumping universes.

Overall point being, the latest arc was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, but I STILL don't regret the time or money I spent on ESO.

For whatever that is worth in informing your decision.

sly inlet
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I'm assuming you mean the minute differences type multiverse

feral viper
primal olive
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I'm only champion rank 1400+ so I can't give much input but here's my opinion: ESO is fun with friends, or if you like farming things and engaging with player economies. If you're looking for good combat ESO is NOT it at all, with a wacky weave system and classes being useless in higher content

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#buffnightblade smhmh lol
but nah another positive is the freedom we get in housing and how it ties nicely into the player economy

sly inlet
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Also weird thought but I think there are two multiverse layers because many paths/shadow magic multiverse doesn't really line up with Lyg/Twelve Planets, It's Timeline vs something else ig

feral viper
# sly inlet I'm assuming you mean the minute differences type multiverse

Specifically the parallel universes based on the outcomes of choices of individuals in those universes.

Which is A: the most boring iteration of Multiverse Hypothesis

B: not how cause and effect or Uncertainty works

C: Invalidates the significance of choice through plurality of outcomes.

D: utterly obliterates the significance of multiple formative events in TES' cosmogony.

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I just... It's terrible, both in concept and in execution.

And that's the last I'm going to say about it.

primal olive
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isn't time only linear for mortals because of Akatosh / Auri El? forgive me I don't know much of the Aedra

sly inlet
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See the thing is don't they imply that the played game is the only "valid" timeline though?, as in the others are weird shadows of it and even Ithelia chooses this one as her main one

feral viper
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Which plays into a secondary problem of... Multi-actor non-linearity would not work the way they present.

But that's a whole other topic, and if I get into it I'm going to get the mods down on our heads

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Point being, ESO is probably worth trying.

primal olive
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Yuh ESO is fun

sly inlet
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anyway yeah, I might try it it depends on the next dlc

primal olive
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Honestly the only dlcs i find awful are High Isle and Galen

sly inlet
primal olive
spare anchor
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I loved the druids line personally

primal olive
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I wish I preordered for that snow elk though :(

primal olive
spare anchor
primal olive
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Dunmer <3

sly inlet
primal olive
sly inlet
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Nice lol

tardy tiger
sly inlet
tardy tiger
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African? I know there's Ancient Egypt but I can't recall African.

sly inlet
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I shouldn't say African but idk the culture's name so

tardy tiger
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Dragon Cult from memory was very Ancient Egypt though that's the Dragon Cult who build all the temples and was ruling Skyrim from Bromjunaar/Labyrinthian

Though with Western Skyrim I do recall a delve that had some would be cultists in Dragonhome.

sly inlet
sly inlet
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Do we think that Argonians might get some more flavor or are they just gonna be Aztecs?

nimble pond
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Despite what the lore might say, Argonians and Hist feel like they are not native to Tamriel or Nirn for that matter.

feral viper
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Hist, no. Argonians are just a bioengineered servitor race bred from native lizards. Think Lizardmen Saurus or Skinks.

tardy tiger
feral viper
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Argonians wish they were Lustria cool.

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Though, really, TES in general wishes it was Warhammer cool...

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Entirely unrelated though.

So back to a useful topic. The whole crafting thing.

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A largely untapped reservoir of potential in the system Fallout and Starfield use for crafting, is the ability to have visual components independent of stats.

While they typically make it so each scope adds slightly different benefits, that isn't strictly necessary. And allowing it to be more of a visual and artistic outlet would vastly improve the customization options available.

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If, for instance, we were to break a Sword down into 3 parts: Blade, Guard, Hilt.

Then we take the major styles in Skyrim: Iron, Steel, Dwarven, Orcish, Elven, Ebony and Daedric, as a base, that equates to 21 different parts.

But it also means more than 300 distinct weapons you can get out of it. For effectively the same amount of modeling work.

Even better is you disconnect Material and Style, and just have what the weapons are made of functions a texture map on the end product.

nimble pond
granite birch
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So we’ve had elder scrolls online out for years and I wanted to ask two things . Can y’all add the option to fly your mounts in game that way those of us who want flying can fly and those that don’t do not have to ?. I also would apreciate the ability to have my own trade boat for crafting fishing and maybe even some PvP ship battles and exploration it be nice if you could add diving to . Elder scrolls online has it all but when it comes to the game that is like the only things it’s missing and I would absolutely love that. I’ve talked with people in auridon chat in us servers and people think that having your own ship that can transport crafting and materials and such is a good idea . Like collecting cargo from other places and storing them . And maybe add the ability to customize your ship like you do your house . I’d really apreciate it bathesda Elder scrolls online is my favorite game of all time I swear I’ve put years of time into it . Id apreciate it if you can add these things to game in some future update or expansion . Thanks
To many more years with you all ~sincerely,
SolomonSage: a huge fan of Elder Scrolls Online ~

feral viper
nimble pond
sly inlet
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One of the biggest things I appreciate about the High Isle lore qna is that it implies that Druidism is going to make it’s way back to HighRock

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It won’t be gone in TESVI

nimble pond
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Druids 😍

tardy tiger
sly inlet
granite birch
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@feral viper thanks

scenic spade
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Oooh, Bethesda... Have I not been loyal enough?

Give us a more detailed trailer of Elder Scrolls 6, please.

Man......... I'm turning 33 before the end of this month. Please give us something before my 34th birthday. This is no longer funny.

feral viper
wide garnet
oak valley
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so whats the state of this game

dire prawn
small grove
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Hey guys do think Elder Scrolls 6 will have House Telvanni?

trim pewter
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I think that game should have some sort of lotion in it like for increased player speed, +15% effictiveness on smooth floors, like stone tiles, I dunno if there'd be linoleum but if there was, that's where it can work too.
Not saying it needs foot equip animations I just mean like your skin has physical properties kinda like barkskin or whatever from TES V Skyrim but you can be covered in lotions or hey, olive oil. Olives definitely grow in Redguardia, High Rock, Reach e.t.c. and it's a good chance to make crouching do something too, i.e. you can put oil on yourself and squeeze into 2foot wide spaces.

small grove
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Woah, what's redguardia? Is that where the yakubians live?

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I bet they have a house of earthly delights on every street in Sentinel

keen bough
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How can you get ride of the Daedric curse of Weakness ? i have searched the net ... found nothing at all about it .. it is realy f.... killing the game

feral viper
feral viper
feral viper
keen bough
feral viper
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Aaah, duly noted in case it comes up again.

high vapor
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Yes.

small grove
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Any afro-goths in the chat?

dire prawn
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It's a style of art...

stark flower
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Lets get back on topic, please

dire prawn
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I'm thinking of going to Patmos over the holidays.

stark flower
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Again, let's get back on topic.

exotic atlas
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its about elder scrolls..?

dire prawn
feral viper
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Oooh, it's True STL nonsense.

Alright, just going to ignore that now.

stark flower
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In any case, it is causing a negative reaction, so we will move on.

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If you have any other questions regarding the decision to remove comments, please take it up with us in @vast rain

exotic atlas
feral viper
exotic atlas
small grove
exotic atlas
small grove
granite star
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Hi everyone. just curious but where can I talk about "the elder scrolls 6"?

high vapor
nocturne stone
feral viper
granite star
feral viper
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I went a touch Newfie for a moment.

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This is the place we usually talk about TES6

wide garnet
wide garnet
scenic spade
wide garnet
feral viper
# scenic spade Thanks man. That give me hope.

Look at it this way. I've been waiting 20 years for Legacy of Kain news. And this year we've gotten a Graphic Novel AND a Soul Reaver remaster.

There is always hope. Especially given that TES is still very much a living franchise, and Bethesda an active developer.

scenic spade
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Seven. lol. I aim to live forever, knowing my attempts will fail, so long as I can extend my life by living healthy.

nimble pond
lethal prairie
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whats a good first game, im a fallout/starfield player looking to play the other game series

dim reef
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help!

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mirak is broken he is just standing here menicingly!

eager remnant
dusk heron
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Should I play Arena and Daggerfall, or just skip them and start with Morrowind?

wide garnet
feral viper
feral viper
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Ultimately, it depends on what you expect and/or want out of a game.

In GENERAL however, Skyrim is the most 'Playable' in a modern context, so the most likely to pull you in.

radiant moss
# dusk heron Should I play Arena and Daggerfall, or just skip them and start with Morrowind?

you should really start with Morrowind or Oblivion, but it's not a bad idea to start with Oblivion or Skyrim and backtrack to the Older Scrolls games if you want to play them all. i love Arena and Daggerfall personally, but Arena is not a good game due to various issues and Daggerfall is built different.

Oblivion's a good start b/c it's simplified like Skyrim, but still contains a lot of classic RPG elements (like traditional skills) like Morrowind.

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if you really wanna start with one of the older games, go with Daggerfall or Morrowind. Battlespire isn't even a bad idea. for Daggerfall, look up Zaric Zhakaron's "Holy Crusader" class build, it's the closest way to play like a modern ES game, you can do a bit of everything and still get to the end. for both of those games don't forget to invest in Agility so you can actually hit stuff in melee combat.

pale walrus
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Which title to start with for a newcomer is a really difficult question to answer. Just taking ES3, 4 and 5 as examples, their gameplay (stories, mechanics, graphics, world interactions and such) differ significantly more than, say, Fallout 3 versus Fallout New Vegas versus Fallout 4. For depth and richness of story, ES3 is the best choice. But for the sheer size of the game world, things to do and length of play before completing everything in the game (as well as the more up to date graphics), it's ES5.

night violet
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One thing I would love to see in TES VI is the background system from Starfield.

They could have backgrounds instead of just races giving a bonus to certain skills.

Like maybe a bard background that gives a bonus to Illusion magic as an example.

feral viper
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I think Starfield is a great step in the right direction there, but it ultimately falls short of the mark.

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A combination of Starfield's Backgrounds and Traits, and Daggerfall's Advantaged and Disadvantages, would be fantastic.

eager remnant
livid ingot
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Yeah, always liked that from Daggerfall's char gen

feral viper
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A GOOD Background system using diverse Traits could easily replace Major/Minor/Misc skills, Classes, Birthsigns, Races, and allow for far more character diversity than all of those could ever do combined.

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Just gotta put in the leg work to build the foundation for it.

pale walrus
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Assuming ES6 is an interesting and engaging title, a long string of DLCs would provide the opportunity to add content and also 'fix' things that didn't quite work out as hoped. Something I wish Skyrim had more of was DLC. Yes, there's stuff from the Creation Club that can be accessed, but I've always been wary of that material because of risks to the integrity of my desktop.

silver turret
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I have a question what's the difference between the special edition for Skyrim and the anniversary edition?

night violet
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Anniversary edition comes with many of Creation club items bundled in

silver turret
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Is it better than the special edition?

night violet
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I would say so yes because of the extra content

radiant moss
feral viper
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Some things Daggerfall just absolutely nails. And character creation options is one of those things.

feral viper
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Over burdening singular story archs, characters and periods with plot after plot after plot errodes the narrative and worldbuilding credibility of ongoing settings to the point of absurdity, and makes it impossible to take them seriously.

Instead, understanding when enough is enough and recognising when to move on is an important skill that is very quickly dying across the industry.

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It's like knowing when to end a TV show. Instead, you renew it for 5 more seasons and drag it out until you've undermined everything that made it good in the first place, and then leave it as a broken and worthless husk of a franchise.

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MMOs are a prime example of this problem, and I for one don't think it's a good idea to pull that flaw into single player RPGs.

pale walrus
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But what if the DLCs are good? ESO is an example of this. The new content turned a mediocre game that was received poorly into a very well liked one. Also, it takes some pressure off the vanilla release. Does the vanilla game really have to be crammed full of 500-600 hours of quests and activities? Giving the devs some breathing room to refine their work and tell better, more complete and more refined stories could be the result if the vanilla game was released with, say, 'only' 300-400 hours of content. Granted: there are potential complications. If the 300 hour game is lousy, there's no guarantee backfilling it with DLCs will improve it. Also, the devs might still get burned out providing a string of DLCs for 3-5 years after vanilla release. I still think it's worth considering, though. There are advantages to such an approach that a good team which is well led can use to benefit the user base.

feral viper
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I think ESO is a prime example of my problem. There's too much going on, involving too many of the same people, all within too small a time period. Made even worse by the fact that they refuse to actually establish a sequence of continuity.

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Whether the content is enjoyable or not doesn't change the damage it does to the setting and narratives.

Like, play ESO. Do Elsweyr, arguably the best of the DLCs, after doing the main quest, and you selected Sai as the sacrifice.

Suddenly, you've broken the continuity.

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WoW, at least, HAS a direct continuity that doesn't cause those sorts of problems (and those problems are constant in ESO) but then also has the 'Too busy' problem.

In the last 20 years, Azeroth has gone though checks notes. 2 Undead wars, 3 major faction wars, 2 demon-alien invasions, a mass invasion from the afterlife, a giant eldritch abomination dragon blowing up half the planet, and the planet BEING STABBED BY A CONTINENT SIZED SWORD.

And at the end of the day, WoW is one of the REASONABLE ones.

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So, I stand by my statement. I think that sort of long term support goal is actively unhealthy for the genre, and the setting.

Skyrim had it right. 2-3 DLCs, then move on.

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Unless you do something like:

Here's the Fighters Guild DLC.

Here's the Dark Brotherhood DLC.

Ect. Dedicating an entire DLC sized focus to faction stories rather than having them in the base game.

But we all know what not having those base game will result in, so I can't recommend that.

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Because it doesn't matter how much content is in the base game, or how big and complete those DLCs are. The result will be people throwing a fit over the factions not being base game, and the DLCs being 'lazy cash grabs'.

pale walrus
# feral viper Because it doesn't matter how much content is in the base game, or how big and c...

OK, I hear you. And let's remember that you're never gonna make everyone happy, so no matter what BGS does in terms of factions, quests and such, somebody will complain. Maybe it just boils down to how well BGS uses any extra time or breathing room they have. And, at the moment, they've given themselves quite a lot - at this point I'm not expecting ES6 to arrive before 2029. I've kind of thrown in the towel on my expectations vis-a-vis release date.

night violet
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Its heavily implied that Varen finds a way to swap places with however you sacrificed. Honestly I never offered anyone but Varen. It feels right to let him be used to clean up the mess he made

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I also heavily doubt they will delay until 2029. That would be really dumb. If they let it go over 10 years since the announcement, it would not be a good thing for them. The fact that's it's been 6 years was already roasted enough this year. Also they have been in full development for a year. Will they really need another 5 years of full development time?

feral viper
night violet
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I feel like that was more they regretted making it a choice in the first place so has it undone. It does make much more narrative sense for Varen to sacrifice himself for this purpose

feral viper
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Yeah, and I'm speaking more generally. But they realised that having that choice caused problems with the stories they wanted to tell, so they retroactively imposed new implications to try and undermine it.

Which just highlights how problematic those sorts of choices actually are in ongoing stories.

Unless you have a persistent, active story teller (like a Game Master) they just don't work.

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The medium is not suited for it.

pale walrus
# night violet Its heavily implied that Varen finds a way to swap places with however you sacri...

Wait - depends. The official word is that full blown development of ES6 began in August 2023. However, the first discussions in BGS offices regarding ES6 almost certainly began some time after the release of ES5 - say, the first half of 2012. We also saw that 2018 sneak peek vid - that represented a significant amount of work already. Logic suggests that BGS really ought to be farther down the road on ES6 and that a release in 2026 or 2027 was a reasonable expectation. But if they truly didn't begin full blown development until August 2023, than 2029 would be an understandable projection. Regardless - far as I'm concerned, it's already a few years late.

pale walrus
feral viper
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See, that's the thing.

I think the choices MAKE the endings ambiguous. By creating multiple outcomes, you make the point of continuation nebulous. That forces you to either distance yourself from commitment (the typically Bethesda solution) or to actively invalidate all but one experience in choosing a cannon ending.

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No one, and I mean NO ONE, has successfully pull off mutually exclusive choices in me experience. And I have played a LOT of RPGs over the last 37 years.

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The closest is probably Phantasy Star 3, and those choices are really just about who you marry every generation, which dictates the stats of your next character in the following generation.

The actual plot plays out basically the same regardless.

night violet
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The warp in the West begs to differ lol

feral viper
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The Warp in the West is a sloppy plot device to try and cover up for the inherent problem of those sorts of systems.

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It's novel ONCE, but using it as frequently as the lore community seems to want to diminishes its significance and turns it into a childish trope.

night violet
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I mean, BG3 has lots of impactful decisions. Some could end your run for you

feral viper
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Yup, and I literally could not care less about 99% of them, and actively feel they make the game worse.

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Unrelated, Withers is lame, and I want his bub body back.

night violet
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Then why play RPGs where you take on the role of the character and shape their life? I feel like choices help you role play more than following a set path and having no other options

feral viper
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Because to me, RPGs are about stat management and creating ways to engage with the world and mechanics. At least on the computer side of things.

Tabletop is an entirely different beast

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The focus on these shifting narratives and the illusion of meaningful choices in RPGs over the last 10-15 years has actually worn quite thin for me.

It was novel when BioWare really started to double down on it with Mass Effect, and by ME3 they had convinced me it was a wasted effort and a quality dead end.

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Computer RPGs ALWAYS impose identity on your characters. It's a simple limitation of the medium. You have to present limited options, because you have to have already defined prescriptive outcomes for them ready to go.

And until we have actual, creative AI that is capable of reacting naturally to real independent decisions making, I'd rather honesty from the creatives making the games rather than the illusion that I actually have control in defining the characters I play.

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Wne I DM, I don't give my players a list of dialogue choices that coincide directly with my prepared plans for the evening.

Computer RPGs need to stop trying to be something they can't be.

stark flower
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This is starting to become a conversation about other games that can be brought up in #off-topic . Let's keep the conversation here focused on Elder Scrolls.

feral viper
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Noted. I will refocus.

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So, instead of trying to create weaving narratives with illusionary choices that ultimately mean nothing and only have impact in the moment but not in the world...

Focus on good mechanics. TES6 isn't going to last a decade or more by trickle releasing convoluted and meaningless stories about dinky little po-dunks or irrelevant cults in the middle of nowhere, or catastrophic apocalypse's where your every choice dictates the fate of worlds.

It's going to last a decade by being FUN TO PLAY and having GAMEPLAY OPTIONS. The narrative choices aren't going to keep it going.

Give it systems that people can engage with independent of the narratives. Systems which are responsive, which include mechanics that variable, and create gameplay experiences which keep you invested.

No body cares who you side with in the Skyrim Civil War after the 50th playthrough. But if the game is fun to play, even being a cabbage farmer in a shack is engaging.

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With that in mind, if you want TES6 to last a decade, AND have that sort of trickle support and DLCs, you should be looking at (I can't believe I'm saying this) Paradox as an example.

Every new DLC for Stellaris and Crusader Kings (we'll ignore the other franchises for the time being) isn't just some new story to explore. It's new SYSTEMS AND MECHANICS to engage with. Which present new gameplay opportunities, new ways to approach characters, and new modding opportunities to boot.

Rimworld is another example of this. DLCs aren't even really story packs (though they do typically contain new quests you can get issues) but whole new systems. From Nobility and Titles, to Religion and Philosophy, to Bioengineering and Genetics, to... Well... Cthulhu and evil technomagic.

It's not just a 10-15 hour, I did the quests, time to move on sorta thing. It's a 'Holy crap, now I want to sink another 300 hours into this game before I even think of modding' sort of thing.

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So, if the goal is long term, even decade long support for TES6, that's the approach I want to see. Not Dawnguard or Nuka World or Shattered Space.

I want an Economics DLC, that changes how money and trade work in-world, opening up opportunities for me to be a merchant or a smuggler.

I want a homesteading or Lordship DLC that lets me take over a community and help it prosper (or tax it into destitution).

I want a Necromancy DLC that lets me construct my own undead abominations.

feral viper
#

At the same time, this sort of DLC approach requires a significant amount of work to do. Most of the studios doing this only have a single game to deal with, they aren't splitting their efforts and focus across multiple franchises.

And it would be unfair and borderline cruel to demand such a dedication to TES6, and force Fallout and Starfield fans to wait decades for any meaningful treatment of their own.

So, assuming Bethesda isn't going to give each franchise their own dedicated studio, they simply will not have the time or manpower for this kind of approach, spread across 3 franchises.

#

Which brings be back to:

2-3 DLCs for TES6. Then move on to the next thing.

pale walrus
#

I think what you're saying is that DLCs shouldn't just be a bundle of new quests, but should include things that genuinely enrich and deepen the game world. I agree.

pulsar root
#

So actual Expansions with a fair timeline

feral viper
#

Basically. Though, looking at Shattered Space... Time isn't the only thing that's needed. And I'm not sure we can reasonably expect what IS.

raven current
#

Pepperidge Farm remembers the old days of full expansion packs, before everything was just DLC.

#

Not that smaller chunks aren't good too, hell TES3 had its own official DLC before it was even called DLC.

pale walrus
#

"Pepperidge Farm remembers", LOL! Wow, brings back memories. 🙂

toxic lake
#

Should I update Skyrim on switch especially if March of the Dead quest did not start for me and they fixed that bug maybe? I did do the other 2 quests for the captain tho so I'm unsure if March of the Dead will start.

#

Is March of the Dead a misc quest or a regular quest?

eager remnant
toxic lake
nimble pond
#

It means the dead are coming for you 👻

feral viper
# raven current Pepperidge Farm remembers the old days of full expansion packs, before everythin...

We were managing to push back against it for a few years. Then the CDPR sycophants gobbled down the '12 free DLCs' thing with Witcher 3, and basically killed any progress there.

Though I am endlessly amused by the double standard of the gaming community and how they pick favourites.

Bethesda or EA release free day one DLC? I wAs CuT cOnTeNt To ScAm Us!

CDPR or Fromsoft release free day one DLC? ThAnK yOu GaMiNg GoDs!

#

Generally speaking though, ship has sailed on that one. There is no longer any distinction between DLC and Expansions, and lamenting the past clarity of terminology is futile. All specificity and accuracy dies at the behest of marketing buzzwords.

#

That said, i personally prefer larger rather than smaller. Things like Shattered Space are probably the SMALLEST i would consider worth it, though that's mostly because the DLC just... Doesn't really add anything interesting or engaging, despite the clear amount of work that went into it.

Compared to Skyrim's DLCs, even Hearthfires, it's very hollow. So looking back at Skyrim and Fallout 4 for inspiration, rather than whatever's going on with Starfield, may be a better idea.

#

Still that falls back on ANOTHER problem.

Overuse.

If TES6 is, say Hammerfell, what do you do for DLCs?

Do you just release part of the province and slowly unlock more as time goes on? That's not gonna fly, for obvious reasons.

Do you add new islands and regions, inventing entirely new sections of the map and pissing off the lorebeards with every new DLC?

Do you add entire provinces, overblowing a single hero's impact and stripping away all the cultural and ethnographical context of the game by just throwing more and more at the wall?

pale walrus
# feral viper Still that falls back on ANOTHER problem. Overuse. If TES6 is, say Hammerfe...

Expansions/DLCs/moar stuff for ES6 should be easy from a geography standpoint. Some of the islands off the HF coast, including Balfiera, could serve. Maybe going all the way out to what's left of Yokuda. Perhaps an adventure that takes us to Thraas. With the proper amount of attention, any of those areas could be quite beautiful or at least striking from a visual standpoint. The real question will be the type of content provided - just as you mentioned previously, it shouldn't be just more quests, reskinned weapons & armor and such, but changes to gameplay mechanics and world interactivity that broaden and deepen the player's experience of the game world.

#

I'd REALLY like to see BGS go completely nuts and create a Thraas DLC which is Lovecraftian in inspiration. I'm not just talking about creepy places and freaky monsters but also things like non-Euclidean geometry and a horror atmosphere. Thraas and its denizens should be....Wrong.

pulsar root
harsh crown
#

If you are asking if The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition is the most recently released version of Skyrim, the answer is yes.

harsh crown
#

Fair enough

pale walrus
# pulsar root True and if they intend to make the next ES Scrolls support way longer then Skyr...

Been thinking about that. From HF, I'm not sure where we could go if we visited another province. Cyrodiil? There's already an ESO expansion into the West Weald, so it won't seem too fresh to go there. Also - how do you 'seal off' the rest of Cyrodiil? Then there's Skyrim. Sure, we could pop across the border to Falkreath, Markarth or Solitude, but again, the problem is how to seal off the rest of the province. Maybe we could go to an individual city and that city is under siege from some enemy force, preventing the PC from exiting into the broader provincial area and only allowing the PC to return from the direction they came. This would reduce the DLC to a single city. It could work, but would take a major effort from the devs to build out the city and make it interesting and detailed enough to explore and support adventures/quests.

glass marlin
#

To be perfectly honest, I highly doubt we'll see another re-release of Skyrim. The only reason Anniversary Edition happened was because of both the 10 year anniversary of Skyrim and the fact they had content to add on (Creation Club). Now that Creation Club has been retired for the Verified Creators program, there's literally nothing to add to Skyrim that can warrant another re-release.

#

And Verified Creations can't be added in officially because they aren't official content like the Creation Club was.

pale walrus
glass marlin
#

AE already did that. lol

harsh crown
raven current
#

Horse armor's already available in the CC

glass marlin
#

Yep. Both versions.

#

But Akatosh forbid if Bethesda decides to make Horse Armor covering other materials. D:

pale walrus
#

What if a new release included adding new riding mounts? Like maybe llamas or really big chickens? 🥳

pulsar root
pale walrus
#

In ES6, I want to be able to ride an ostrich. A giant, carnivorous ostrich.

feral viper
#

And I'm not talking tentacle monsters and weird cults. That stuff is a dime a dozen in fiction.

I'm talking about REAL Lovecraftian inspiration. The rank insignificance of man and the futility of our aspirations. The raw fear of an unforgiving and uncaring cosmos where you are as worthless as the amoeba who stumble blind through a drop of water.

#

Lovecraft isn't about noneuclidean geometry or tentacles or cults or cosmic monsters driving you mad.

It's about the conflict of ego with the utter lack of agency and value that humans have in the greater cosmos. Cthulhu doesn't emit 'madness', it's the stark realisation that you are utterly without purpose or meaning and nothing you ever do will ever matter, that causes the mind to break as the human ego confronts the reality of their own insignificance.

#

And that... Is incredibly difficult to play around with in a video game format. Because at its core, exploring that is a no-win situation. The closest you can come to victory is maintaining a shred of self worth long enough for your fragile and temporary body to die, and your consciousness to fade into nothingness.

And games where you CAN'T win, where the threat is so far beyond anything you can cope with that even understanding it crushes your self worth, just... Don't really work.

#

So the best we can hope for is the superficial window dressing of Lovecraft.

Because TRUE Lovecraftian inspiration is antithetical to the gameplay experience.

pale walrus
#

Wait - there's elements that could be used to excellent effect, with the right sort of effort from the writers. Think about it - the beasties in Lovecraft have very particular attitudes regarding humans: they are sometimes prey, other times experimental subjects (lab rats), occasionally a nuisance to be ignored or in other circumstances upstarts to be annihilated. The general theme is an anti-human one, where humans are to be consumed, manipulated or otherwise used ruthlessly to further the ends of the Lovecraft creatures. The whole mindset of Lovecraft's beings is also completely different from that of humans - especially because of their billion year perspectives. Think about using all of this along with all of your characterizations of the Cthulhu creatures together and weaving a story where your PC HAS to go to Thraas to achieve some particular objective. YOUR goal and its value matter, despite any of the machinations and inclinations of the truly alien beings who inhabit Thraas. Man, I'm tellin' ya - some good writers could make a real whizbang of a story with that. Think about "In the Mountains of Madness." That was a COOL Lovecraft story which would have much more potential in an ES setting including Thraas.

feral viper
#

The theme is more that... Humans are meaningless. The other, relevant species in the universe are so far beyond us that we are, at best, livestock to them.

Which you can use as a motivation for others, but that's pretty common conceptually. Where Lovecraft differs from general fiction is...

In Lovecraft, they're right.

pale walrus
#

Ya see? That could be FUN! Granted, maybe my idea of fun is warped. But a flight of imagination could breathe some fresh air into ES. 🙂

feral viper
#

Don't get me wrong, I would welcome such a divergence. But I don't think a game where you CAN'T win is going to sell.

#

Though I should stipulate too that Lovecraft influenced my perspective on narrative stakes and the whole Chosen One dynamic, and is largely the reason I don't like 'Everyman' stories about rising to meet the challenge.

#

Nyarlathotep would be a lot less scary if anyone could challenge him just by believing in them self

pulsar root
#

They don't have to go full 1:1 Lovecraft, just use elements of it(The its all hopeless part should only be used as way to manipulate lesser willed mortals to think it is).

feral viper
#

Which is why I mentioned window dressing. Which, TES is full of already.

It's not really Lovecraft. But it looks enough like the pop culture perception of Lovecraft that people associate them.

Hell, that's basically all of Apocrypha's schtick.

#

Personally, I think that trying to make the Sload Lovecraftian would be a mistake though. That's a more appropriate spin for the Daedra.

Mortals would be better suited for exploring aspects of humanity that most don't engage with through many narrative structures.

#

Something that fantasy fails to do, in general (and TES is no exception to this) is explore the ramifications of their magic and biological differences.

The Sload present a fantastic opportunity to do just that. The youngest stage of their development isn't even sentient, they totally lack a social concept of valuing or respecting the dead, and they actively become more intelligent and powerful as they age. And that's without even getting into their changing habitat needs as they age.

The hell with trying to shoehorn Lovecraft into there, they already have enough interesting potential

tardy tiger
#

I find TES really doesn't think of magic much.

Like how the TES3 guild guides somehow haven't killed of transport options like boats and striders.

feral viper
#

If I start going into how bad TES' worldbuilding really is, it's going to detail things very quickly and get me in trouble.

#

Sufficed to say, while I DO think Thras would be an option for Hammerfell, I don't think Lovecraftian influences are necessary for it.

#

Lovecraftian stuff should be reserved more for Oblivion, and places outside the mundane.

eager remnant
# tardy tiger I find TES really doesn't think of magic much. Like how the TES3 guild guides s...

Why would guild guides "kill off" other transportation options? Airplanes didn't "kill off" buses or transatlantic ship travel. Automobiles haven't killed off bicycles. People have different tastes, they want different things. I can easily imagine that there are people in Tamriel who hate and fear magic in all its manifestations and who would refuse to go near a guild guide. I bet some would even pay extra to avoid guild guides.

feral viper
#

The economic realities would be very different though. The only reason Airplanes didn't totally upend overseas travel is because they lack the ability to transport as many goods at once. But engines did in fact basically kill off sailing ships, turning it into a niche luxury hobby rather than the cornerstone of the global economy.

#

Within 50 years of the first steamers, the amount of sailing ships being build dropped to less than 1% of the pre-steamer amount.

#

More traditional solutions are unlikely to ever go away entirely, but the economic trends that things like Teleportation would drive would make the world fundamentally different than what we see.

#

I mean, hell. Borders and trade have been driven by natural choke points for thousands of years. River shallows, mountain passes, etc.

If teleportation were a thing, the entire foundation of modern territorial delineation and regional trade wouldn't even exist, because you could just get a mage to skip you across the river wherever you needed.

#

And that's without getting into issues like Monsters further making conventional trade systems dangerous and unreliable, magical communication radically changing administrative structures, offensive magic just rendering all of real world martial traditions obsolete, transmutation upending the foundation of every currency system we've ever developed, etc.

#

Transmute Metals alone would entirely obliterate the Septim system of currency driven trade, making precious metals inconsequential to gain.

#

In fact, the Septim's relation to Gold is probably entirely false, and the only way it would function is as a fiat currency.

#

For the record, this isn't uniquely a TES problem. Consider D&D. Your Wizard hits level 20 by, say ... Age 40. The average lifespan of a human on D&D is comparable to modern humans, so say 85.

You can now cast WISH, over 16,000 times.

Worldbuilders just never actually think about the wider implications of the magic in their settings. They just put magic in there, because magic is cool

tardy tiger
feral viper
#

Don't get me wrong. They're good for video games. But best in all of fiction?

#

Legacy of Kain, Lord of the Rings, The Expanse...

#

Remberance of Earth's Past, Prydain, the Myth Inc series was fantastic...

#

Conan (especially if you include Lovecraft in it).

#

I'd also make an argument for the original Phantasy Star quadrilogy, and both Might and Magic settings (Enroth and Ashan).

#

Warhammer Fantasy, AOS and 40k.

feral viper
#

TES is definitely on the high end for video games that's true.

But I think video games in general are on the low end for fiction.

feral viper
#

Mine, personally?

#

They are justified in their opposition, though not in their indiscriminate violence. The Reach morally belongs to them, and the Nords, per usual, suck.

noble verge
#

They say the land is theirs, all the while squatting in ruins built by the Nords, aspiring to reassert ownership of a city built by the Dwemer.

#

Meanwhile, Madanach spent like 25 years commanding them to do Thonar's dirty work, including murdering other Reachmen.

pulsar root
#

You would think killing other forsworn or having them killed would at least make his followers question him. Outside of the blind cult- I mean zealots.

noble verge
#

As far as the Forsworn know, they're just carrying out Madanach's will and eliminating his enemies. They have no idea that Thonar is the one commanding Madanach.

pale walrus
#

I wonder why the Thalmor haven't reached out to the Forsworn and Reachmen in general to build a relationship and support them in their efforts to break away from HR and SR. This could only serve their own interests and create further internal problems for the Cyrodiil Empire.

raven current
raven current
# noble verge They say the land is theirs, all the while squatting in ruins built by the Nords...

I mean, yeah, it is kinda their land. They were natives to the overall region long, long before the Imperials and Nords showed up. They moved into Markarth after the Dwemer disappeared and it remained theirs for centuries until Hestra's invasion (and thus Faolan's battles against them), and then after the Alessians fell the Nords took over. The Reachfolk didn't get it back until Durcorach's reign.

feral viper
#

I approve of anyone killing Nords.

#

Get rid of those colonizing wretches.

raven current
#

Losing it again to Tiber's conquests, finally getting it back again during the Great War

#

And now we're at the Forsworn, who quite rightly hate their demonization and overall mistreatment at the hands of the Nords as a people, let alone constantly losing their capital

#

They took over Markarth relatively bloodlessly and were trying to genuinely stand as another region of the Empire, but instead the Nords sent in Ulfric and basically killed anyone who disagreed with them, understandably radicalizing the Forsworn in the process.

#

It's bad blood all around.

noble verge
#

The Nords have been in the Reach since at least before the Dragon War, as evidenced by no fewer than two Dragon Priests being entombed there.

raven current
#

And?

#

They weren't in Markarth.

noble verge
#

At that time, the Dwemer were.

feral viper
#

We also don't now when those Priests were interred.

#

It's entirely possible they were from the many strongholds of the Dragon Cult that persisted for centuries afterwards. Potentially even having gone into hiding IN Reachman territory to escape the victorious rebels.

raven current
feral viper
#

Considering the trend for Nords has been:

Invade a land, slaughter the locals, blame them to justify genocide and oppression...

I'm inclined to err on the side of the Reachmen.

noble verge
#

It didn't stick, but clearly the Nords had been in that area for a very long time.

feral viper
#

Invading. The word you want is invading.

noble verge
#

Just like how every race in Tamriel established their homeland.

feral viper
#

Not true. Most of the cases we have for the origins of populations involve either them always being present, or moving into unoccupied lands early in the timeline. Even the Dunmer show no signs of invading anything. In fact, they were INVADED by the Nedes, not the other way around.

Only the Redguard, Direnni and Nords were clear invaders. The Ayleids are a little iffy.

#

But the whole discourse of TES history for the last decade has been nothing but Nord Apologetics. Even the Night of Tears makes no sense within the Nord Innocence narrative, but people cling to it like a security blanket because 'But muh viKINGS'!

raven current
#

Hell it's been indicated since the PGE1 that the Usual Narrative™️ about the Night of Tears is just the whitewashed half-story.

feral viper
#

ESO did no better, deciding to strip away the cultural variability of the Ayleids and make them all slaving, torturing despots.

Because again, TES has become nothing but Nord Apologetics driven by the desperate need to make Humans the good guys. Especially the traditionally Nordic white humans. Which raises all kinds of unintentional bias concerns.

noble verge
feral viper
#

No, a problematic translation of a mythic account of Topal's travels says that.

raven current
#

(said account is admitted to be iffy by said translator too)

#

Topal the Pilot is basically their Homer's Odyssey and the Iliad.

feral viper
#

A translation by someone who ACTIVELY DOUBTS HIS OWN TRANSLATION in the very text, and which uses a nonsensical archaeological find to try and prop up his interpretation

raven current
#

I wouldn't be surprised if the birdpeople were just, like, a group of harpies that lived on the island.

noble verge
feral viper
#

It also contains clear incongruities with later information. Such as the fact that Dragons migrated south with the Atmorans, but according to the account of Topal the Pilot were already present when Topal circumnavigated the continent.

raven current
#

If the claim isn't supported, it can be dismissed just as freely.

feral viper
#

Well, the presence of dragons, for one.

The navigational uselessness of the orbs mentioned in the beginning.

The Dawn-exodus narrative of the Velothi directly contradicting the timeline.

The poor attestation of individuals involved.

raven current
#

Actually I will point out one thing, dragons come from Akavir too, so they might've been easterners who'd already migrated or otherwise actual scattered natives.

feral viper
#

Topal the Pilot is a poor man's historical document, based on a translation of an old tapestry. It's not even based on actual primary sources.

Like... Just from the most basic academic standards would make the book questionable.

raven current
#

but as it stands, there's a lot wrong with the Altmeri narratives. But they don't let that get in the way of a good propaganda piece.

feral viper
#

Unless that's changed since I stopped paying attention to TES lore with Ithelia

raven current
#

Well there's some that are still noted to be directly from Akavir. See Laatvulon, the Demon from the East.

noble verge
raven current
#

Especially for these ancient texts, the whole point is that... they're ancient. Forgotten history abounds in Tamriel.

#

there's a salient quote, one sec

feral viper
#

The problem is, the lore is often written by people intending to convey something, and often having no sodding idea what they're talking about.

raven current
# 

Chancellor Abnur Tharn says, "As one Imperial scholar to another, Aidius, I am surprised to hear you use the word 'facts' about an individual known to us only through the medium of myth. In 'fact,' it matters not whether Morihaus was man, bull, or Eidar cheese—what matters is how his saga supports the national narrative of the Empire, and how belief in the might and righteousness of Morihaus informs the self-image of the average Cyrodiil. The creation story of the Empire has no purpose or meaning beyond its support of the Empire's continuation. If this is news to you, perhaps it is time to review the continuation of your Imperial stipend."```
#

And when you consider that the Imperials get half their cultural ideas from the Altmer...

#

They're basically just self-aware where the Altmer buy into it fully.

feral viper
#

As an example, the orbs talked about in the beginning of Topal the Pilot, that the author uses to reinforce his interpretation of the tapestry and the validity of the narrative.

They're globes. They're clearly gloves, based on the description, but designed to rotate in different directions. Presumably pointing towards a magical source from the perspective of an origin point.

#

Problem is? That's USELESS for navigation.

#

The very item that is supposed to give credibility to the story, will make anyone who knows even the most basic navigation skills immediately dismiss the value of them and turn the author into a joke.

Because you CANT NAVIGATE WITH A GLOBE. Thats not what a Globe is for.

#

So we have to either ignore the rank absurdity of the assertion and just swallow it, dismiss the author as a bumbling moron who doesn't know what hes talking about, or actively fix the developers writing error to make the text work

#

And NONE of those are good options

#

If it means furthering their goals?

Yes.

Arm them, and let them loose on the enemy.

#

The Thalmor would love nothing more than for the cavemen, Nord and Reachman alike, to kill eachother.

#

It means less cleanup for the real masters of Tamriel.

raven current
#

Oh 100% they'd be perfectly fine riling up the Forsworn. But the Forsworn know better than to fall for that.

feral viper
#

Well, some of them.

raven current
#

They know who the Thalmor are and what they represent, which is far from what the Reachfolk want.

feral viper
#

It's important to remember that the Foresworn are not a united people. They are a collection of mostly independent clans, with different ideas about how to approach things.

While Madanach is likely far too smart for that, the same can't necessarily be said for all the clans

#

It would be unlikely to be a united effort however. The Thalmor would have to try to weaponise clan by clan. And for most of those, it would probably be an unlikely goal

raven current
#

If the Dominion had've reached Skyrim, the Reachfolk might've even temporarily allied with the Nords, likely requesting Markarth in exchange

#

But as it is, the jarl just had to muck things up instead.

noble verge
#

TES II had knightly orders in Hammerfell.
The Knights of the True Horn in Oblivion's Battlehorn Castle DLC were one such knightly order.

feral viper
#

I quit the lore and lore community for a reason. I've no intention on going back.

pale walrus
#

Wait - I recommend we simplify this.

#

ALL of the tribes were invaders except for the Dunmer, Argonians and Khajiit. The lore looks pretty safe on this statement.

#

Nedes? Invaders. They fought lots of different groups and eventually lost and/or got absorbed.

#

Altmer/Aldmer? Yeah, they invaded Summerset and other places too. Same for their cousins the Ayleids - there were 'bird people' in Cyrodiil originally.

#

Everyone else is also an invader. It's obvious.

#

Possibly the deepest root of all the conflicts between the tribes involves who 'rightfully' owns a given piece of land. Better for all of them that the land is simply owned by whoever is currently living there and simply let sleeping dogs lie.

noble verge
# feral viper So we have to either ignore the rank absurdity of the assertion and just swallow...

Here's how I think of it:

The translator's commentary, and their knowledge on the subject matter, while it helps grant context and has some interesting musings from an in-universe perspective, is not ultimately what's important. What truly matters is the actual translation, and the question of what it said in original Aldmeris. Could stuff be mistranslated? Sure, and the author acknowledges that it's possible for other scholars to disagree with the vocabulary he used when translating from Aldmeris. However, it's also important to remember that the source material- the fragments- still exist in-universe even if they haven't made it into the games. Aldmeris isn't a lost language, so there's no guarantee that the in-universe historical consensus- which does take the account of Topal's journey seriously- hinges on this particular translation. And if you ask me, even if stuff in-universe is often wrong, until there's some real proof that it's wrong, I'll take it over fan conjecture hinging on real-life nautical navigation.

#

I'd rather chalk it up to an error by the IRL writer or heck, even a mistake on the part of the early Aldmer (considering Topal was the only captain that returned, and had failed in his mission, there was clearly some fallibility) than entirely discredit the account.

noble verge
pale walrus
#

Ya know, you'd think that if the Western Reachmen in HR joined forces with Skyrim's Reachmen, they'd be able to break away from both states and form a country of their own.

noble verge
#

I wonder how things are going over in the Western Reach. Could Ulfric's reconquest of Markarth have resulted in some of the Skyrim Reachmen fleeing to the Western Reach?

pale walrus
nimble pond
#

I can't ever really see the forsworn ever forming their own country. When they take out their enemies, they'd likely just start picking off each other next.

pale walrus
#

I kinda dig the stronghold Orcs. They have guts. Very self-reliant, serious and committed people.

pale walrus
nimble pond
raven current
#

Makes sense they'd be surrounding it.

feral viper
#

Eeeh... It forces them into pigeonholed social practices that hyper focus on particular survival strategies, and would almost certainly lead to their cultural extinction.

#

Orc Culture only works because the fiction of the setting says it does. It has no actual long term value and is doomed to failure in any real context.

Warrior Cultured in general are failures of social development and only viable in isolation on small scales.

When confronted with more sophisticated cultures, they always fail to survive.

So it does end up being Survival of the Fittest, and cultures like the Orcs NEVER survive. Because they are not fit for survival.

feral viper
#

Entirely unrelated...

Reading the new Players Handbook for 5.5, and I am once again struck by the fact that American developers need to get with the sodding times.

What the hell is a Cubic Foot? Why is a bucket measured in it, instead of a Quart, or Ounces? Why do you have entirely different systems of measurements for the SAME THING at different scales.

#

If TES6 uses Feet, Miles, Pounds, or any other such nonsense, I may suffer from a rage induced stroke.

gloomy anchor
feral viper
#

Yes. America, and 12th century peasants.

#

And technically Liberia and Myanmar.

gloomy anchor
#

Next thing you know, you will want us to use celcius too!

feral viper
#

A system of temperature which used the single most common molecule in the universe as the basis for its scale?

What a preposterous idea.

#

A system based off a rare and highly toxic liquid metal is definitely more reasonable.

😛

gloomy anchor
#

Honestly, I always wondered why we used a different standard of measurement from everywhere else as well. If I ever travel I will have no idea how far away things are.

feral viper
#

I will say, it's better than Canada though. At least you picked a side.

#

I literally have recipes in Canadian Cookbooks that measure Oil in mL, Flour in Cups, Spices in Teaspoons, and Butter in Grams.

gloomy anchor
#

If someone says a gas station is a kilometer down the road....

feral viper
#

About 900 yards

gloomy anchor
#

to many yards...miles please

feral viper
#

About .6 miles.

gloomy anchor
#

ah see, right around the corner lol

feral viper
#

So... 2/3rds of a mile.

I also hate ratios...

gloomy anchor
#

yah .6 is more like 1/2 then 2/3 😛

feral viper
#

Clear, rational numbers expressed as a decimal please.

#

Splitting hairs. 2/4rds would be .666r.

gloomy anchor
#

2/4 is half! lol

feral viper
#

So, 2/3rds is only .066 off, while 1/2 is .1 off.

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A difference of 44%, or about 3/8ths.

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Anyone else smell burning?

gloomy anchor
feral viper
#

Anyway, that wild tangent aside...

Just pull a FF14 on it. Name swap measurements for something in universe, and move on.

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At least then it's not as obvious.

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Ilm, Fulm, Yalm, Malm. We all know what they're based on, but they fit with the world and still create a level of disconnect for the non-medieval players.

pale walrus
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1 kilometer = 1000 meters. A meter is longer than a yard, so that's pretty close to 1100 yards.

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I don't think Tamriel will have a sophisticated scalar measurement system for either distance or temperature. Perhaps the dwemer had one, but I would be very surprised if the rest of the continent did. They'll have things like leagues, paces/strides and such. As an engineer, I'm used to moving between different measurement systems. Doesn't bother me - kind of like it, in fact. It's fun to convert measurements in my head as needed. Yeah, I'm weird. 🤓

feral viper
primal olive
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elder scro

bleak silo
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N’wah

pulsar root
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Bruh wah

nimble pond
#

I want glowing mana rain at night sometimes that lightly glows the night and also provides constant magic recharge for those standing in it. Will I get it? No

pale walrus
pale walrus
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Zero chance, bro. All PC choices of relevance are always left open-ended in the lore, other than the defeat of the designated super-bad guy of the title (Big Daddy Dagoth in ES3, Mehrunes Dagon in ES4, and of course Alduin in ES5.)

hexed sail
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Will anyone tell me how to know how many Horned Owl Feathers I have consumed?

pale walrus
#

You'll know it's too many when the horned owls take out a Dark Brohood or Morag Tong contract on you....

noble verge
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We can recognize a few choices that the Nerevarine made- they evidently sided with Carius during the events of Bloodmoon (hence why his body is in Frostmoth and not in Mortrag Glacier), and swayed Neloth into recognizing them as Hortator instead of just killing him.

It's also clear that Malacath's TES III quest was completed, and although there is a choice of dialogue declaring that you'll leave peacefully after confronting Farvyn Oreyn about the truth of his ancestor he'll try to kill you either way.

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That said, neither TES III nor TES IV had a choice with as much of a large-scale effect as the civil war, so unless Bethesda pulls another Dragon Break, it's uncharted waters for their TES storytelling.

noble verge
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Hammerfell has Dwarven ruins. Even the name "Hammerfell" originates from the Dwemer.

pale walrus
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Yeah, we'll get Rourken Dwemer in HF (I'm hoping that they are different in some way from other dwemer ruins.) Should be Ayleid, Nede, perhaps Altmer and/or Left Hand Elf along the coast (I might be stretching things a bit there), perhaps some Nordic stuff near Dragonstar, and maybe some Orcish stuff (the old Orsinium at least.) That's all that comes to mind at the moment. Oh, wait - maybe the Direnni have some unique ruins to the north on the Bay.

raven current
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bruh it didn't start proper production until Starfield's release. We're lucky we got the trailer we did.

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They also explicitly said around that time that there were three major projects coming before TES6, which we now know to be F4, F76 and Starfield.

feral viper
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That trailer has always been a 'Yes, we will make it, please stop asking about it' thing.

raven current
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Plus ESO's been handling the heavy lifting for a while. Bethesda's got other stuff than just TES they do and want to do, let them do what they want to do. Whether you like the other games, imagine how the next iteration of their tech's gonna look in TES6

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They've said before that part of the delay for TES6 was that certain tech they wanted just wasn't there yet

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Anger in this case implies entitlement. They're making the game, they'll talk about it when they have something to talk about.

livid ingot
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The teaser was really an artifact of a special time and place

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It's widely speculated that Bethesda made the teaser to avoid a PR disaster that Blizzard had experienced a few months before

feral viper
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To be fair, I don't think waiting on tech will solve the problems. There are major gameplay systems that need a lot of work, and have needed work for decades.

livid ingot
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People were suspecting a major title announcement only to get a mobile game. And there was huge backlash from Blizzard fans when the mobile game was announced. Bethesda was going to be announcing the same (new mobile game) so the teaser may have been put together to avoid a similar scenario

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I should say though, Bethesda has been open with fans. Like Serithi said, they told fans that several other projects were in the work before TES VI, and they basically announced when they started working on TES VI full time after Starfield released.

feral viper
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I find there is a difference between being open, and being honest.

And I haven't found much of Bethesda's discourse to be honest. Evasive, dismissive, and sometimes condescending, sure, but rarely honest.

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I can understand the why of it of course. Communicating with Gamers is like wading into a septic tank.

pulsar root
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That announcement was during a time when people(Wrongly) thought BGS was shifting to multiplayer stuff >_>

pale walrus
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What 'technology' were they waiting for? Maybe AI/ML to apply to NPC behavior? I'm assuming it's nothing mundane like graphics.

raven current
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We don't know yet.

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That would be pretty neat to have, though.

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Conventional AI packages are a massive pain to code, they're no strangers to that.

feral viper
#

I suspect it was Procgen. And they intended Starfield to be a launchbed for said tech.

And it was not promising.

pale walrus
feral viper
#

I assume everything from any is marketing babble, until demonstrated otherwise.

feral viper
#

However, and this is entirely speculation...

Give the much larger total area and higher actor densities of populated regions in Starfield, I suspect Bethesda was hoping that next-gen procedural generation would allow them to create much larger world spaces populated with far more actors, with comparable effort. And Starfield was intended to be the testbed for that.

Unfortunately... Well.

livid ingot
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I just learned recently that Starfield NPCs apparently don't have schedules - which is crazy because that's been a staple of many Bethesda Studios games for - well since Oblivion

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A friend mentioned people were working on modding them in.

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As I've said before, I would really like improved AI to be an important focus of TES:VI

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And I've heard BGS is interested in that too, but every game seems to cut back the dynamism of NPCs

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I'm hoping that's a tech they've been waiting for further advancements in

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For me it's always been a big part of what made TES IV and TES V so alive for me.

feral viper
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Most NPCs in Starfield are not persistent. They spawn, are given a path to move, and despawn. Or they stand in the same place in perpetuity.

They're basically just lifeless cardboard cutouts taking up space, similar to what you see in Rockstar games.

pale walrus
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There's been calls for for BGS (and, of course, for other games) to make broad changes to the way NPCs act in the game world and interact with the PC. I don't think it's possible, though, for every NPC to be capable of having a deep, extended and unique interaction with the PC. I also don't see it as desirable - after all, if you live in an urban setting, do you have deep interactions with every person you see? It's impossible to do and not desirable in any case. But NPC interaction could definitely do with a dose of creativity. An example to illustrate: you're in a market square, looking over all the wares available - fruits and veggies, meats, baked goods, weapons, armor, ingredients for potions, all sorts of different stalls in the market. As you're wandering, you notice a girl - probably a tween, trying to look tidy but with a threadbare and slightly dirty outfit. You see her pickpocket somebody and then try to get lost in the crowd. You follow. She runs. You chase her down and corner her, and she is deeply frightened. But when you engage, she begins explaining why she did what she did, and this opens up an adventure. Or perhaps you discreetly follow her instead, and that still opens up an adventure. This is STORYTELLING, instead of the 'quest assignment' protocol that BGS has done in the past - a lazy and boring approach.

pulsar root
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But how many people should have that many notable reactions. How much is "acceptable" I think for the most parts the amount of NPCS in Skyrim is a low amount(The ones in the city that aren't guards). That might of been understandable back in 2011 but I don't just think having only a few citizens, is the best approach. Starfield has a lot of citizens walking around and it feels more lived in.

Yes they spawn in, despawn whatever but in terms of feel it still feels like its way bigger compared to Whiterun or even Solitude. Not counting the actual quest Npcs that are there or big characters.

(I should note a fully handcrafted worldspace generally feels better to if that wasn't obvious enough here and its where Bethesda thrives the most)

pale walrus
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I agree. The Skyrim cities were almost empty, and it was disturbing. I was talking about NPCs with whom you can interact in a meaningful or at least interesting way.

nimble pond
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Yea, I mean that's pretty much how it feels in life when you're walking around a big city and don't know many people there. They just come and go like paper cutouts.

pale walrus
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You just gave me an idea, Gin. Maybe BGS should add some 'spice' to city crowds. In other words, every once in a while there should be someone you see in the crowd who really stands out - an insanely hot chick, or some guy who is trying to appear incognito but nonetheless excudes profound menace, or someone else who is also trying to be incognito but is tracking/following you. NPCS - whether few or many - can often appear to be just objects because of their appearance and movement. Give the player a REASON to study the crowd.

nimble pond
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Ig, but I'm ok transversing these crowds with my companions or even some of the in-game friends made along the way

eager remnant
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"Tracking.following" reminds me of one of my "must-have" Skyrim mods. "Ultimate Deadly Encounters and Spawns" makes a massive amount of changes (including doing away with enemy spawn points and respawn timers), but one of its most interesting features to me is that, under certain conditions, an assassin may track the player character in cities.....using the disguise of a vanilla named NPC. With this feature turned on it is hard to tell if that is really Danica Pure-Spring walking around Whiterun or an assassin masquerading as Danica Pure-Spring. This forces you to keep a close eye on all NPCs around you at all times, looking for suspicious behavior.

nimble pond
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I would be super-stressed with social anxiety lol. Going out into the city everyday feeling like another new assassin is out to backstab me.. gonna turn me into one of those conspiracy theorists that believes everyone is out to get me! 😂 like can't a guy catch a break and take in the city views?

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Now being "stalked" by assassins or animals out in the wild is fine by me tho, it's expected lol

nimble pond
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@pale walrus bruh, stu add me I gotta show you this, lmao

pale walrus
feral viper
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Yeah... NPCs is a chronic problem. And different people are going to react to it differently.

Lots of people praise Wild Hunt and GTA for their 'Living Citites'. But I find them barren hellscapes of worthless drones. A living city is one populated by people, who have places to go and things to do.

Not lifeless cardboard cutouts who walk perpetual circuits day in and day out with no purpose. Not blank drones that spawn in when you're looking just to take up space. Not crowds of functionless bodies just there to take up space and look populated, but have no names or homes or functions.

Skyrim's cities may have been smaller, yes, but at least the NPCs in them were approaching people.

Bethesda has seriously slipped in this regard, with Starfield's cities being nothing but soulless drone hives that take up space.

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If NPCs don't have the 3Ps, they aren't worth existing in my opinion.

Persistence. Purpose. Personally.

livid ingot
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Yeah, numbers of npcs don't really do a whole lot for me personally. Not worth the tradeoff in my mind

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I think cities could feel a lot less empty if there was more synergy with NPC design

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Narrower streets, more outdoor clutter, etc

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A muddy street full of footprints

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Even sound effects of city life.

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A lot could help mask the relatively low population

pulsar root
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Number npcs do matter, but most people probably don't truly look at the number deeply They're more focused on playing then analyzing.

nimble pond
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I like having both in a game. Immersing myself in more populated, busy cities, like going to a concert, and then the cozy smaller settlements with less population, but more interactive NPCs. Like having beer and a fire in the back with friends.

feral viper
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Ideally we would have both, yes. But I prefer actual characters I can interact with over crowds of meaningless drones.

nimble pond
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I get that. But I just can't see them having a crowd of 1,000 in big cities and having them as interactable as NPCs in smaller settlements, on top of everything else using up system hardware.

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Even in real life, that's not realistic. No way I could meet everyone in a big city. Most will just be people passing by that I won't remember or have any interaction with whatsoever.

raven current
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Why does every NPC have to be interactable?

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People can have their own business they've gotta get to that don't involve chatting to the local murderhobo

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Sometimes you're just passing those thousand faces in a crowd to get to the person you're actually looking for. That's real life.

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If you try to make every NPC Matter™️, then it just becomes lifeless. You can't have a living world and also have it revolve around the player.

pulsar root
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Its why I say having more npcs but I wasn't asking for hundreds mind you(Guards not included in this).

feral viper
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That's part of the thing. If you want it to be a living world, it can't revolve around the player.

You either have a Character whose story is being Told, and everything revolves around that. Or you have a World which has Characters in it.

Bethesda has typically tried to err more on the latter, though Fallout 3, 4 and Starfield have definitely pushed more to the former.

But that choice extends to a lot more than just NPCs.

feral viper
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But if you're playing as a Mage, there's no reason your relevant interactions with people should be exactly identical to if you're a Warrior.

And when EVERYONE is interactive to EVERYONE, you know.. like in the real world, you can more easily skirt around the relevancy issue. Because different people are going to be willing to interact with different people under different circumstances. Therefore, you can come up with a reasonable explanation for why anyone may be willing to interact with any PC.

When you have non-interactive NPCs though, it doesn't matter how many characters you have or how many options there are, the perpetual distinction between interactive and non-interactive makes things more stark and jarring.

livid ingot
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I was designing a mod for an original town and I gave all the guards names and houses and families and time off from work

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It's always bothered me how generic they are, and as they are killed they just spawn in new replacements

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It was a small village so I only had about six guards planned, but I can easily see an argument against from a more practical point of view.

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Still, it's always something I wanted to see changed. Guards are members of their community. Except for the occasional captain, they're basically automatons in the games.

nimble pond
# livid ingot Funny you should bring up guards. I'm one of those people who think guards shoul...

I think it would be cool having different tier level guards. You got your basic ones and then idk, if you're really a menace, they break out the riot gear and swat guards (tougher guards as your crime level rises). Maybe more investigative and cunning guards for thievery that get more and more difficult to deal with as you rise in reported thievery or thievery reported in a certain area at a time.

Also, maybe I just don't remember, but what about guards that use magic to take you down? Guards that are mages? Each town should have a mix of melee and mage guards.

nimble pond
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Haha so.. I was thinking of turning "addict" into a skill tree, kinda like the vamp and wolf trees from Skyrim, but with alcoholic and chem based perks. So you can truly relish and enjoy your newfound abilities, strengths, and weaknesses under certain influences, truly enhance yourself beyond natural capabilities.. and on a more interesting and advanced level than just the buffs/debuffs that amateurs normally get. Might just as well be one of those Marvel characters with those new otherworldly powers 🤩

feral viper
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I'd be a little hesitant to have and Addict skill tree, for obvious reasons.

stuck minnow
#

the elder scrolls 6 is one of the MOST anticipated games EVER

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for once bethesda, let us start the game as a guard, rather than being locked up 😛

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Bring back the vampire lord trasnformation but you can FLY in the map

livid ingot
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Now they would have use for enchanted items and scrolls to help them deal with magical threats. So I could definitely see them doing that.
For further support they might call on the court mage or local mage's guild if needed to help protect the city.

pale walrus
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I wanna be able to turn my PC into Powdered Toast Man!

wide garnet
nimble pond
nimble pond
# livid ingot Given the drudgery of lots of town guard work, I'd find it hard to believe any o...

I don't see why not. I mean just because they have magical abilities doesn't mean they shouldn't have the choice to do as they wish with their talents.. Many of us have shared talent in specific abilities, but we don't all just pick the same careers with it. So if they want to serve as guards in a town or battlemages in the Imperial army, they should be able to do that. Everyone has their own personal and unique interests.

pulsar root
nimble pond
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Perhaps, tho given the civil war in Skyrim, it is a convenient situation in that case.. And in either case, I think they'd want some form of protection over their towns than none at all.. if it came to that.

livid ingot
# nimble pond I don't see why not. I mean just because they have magical abilities doesn't mea...

You have a degree in engineering but your real passion is delivering Amazon packages or working the fryer at McDonalds.
I don't say this to slander poorly paid jobs. I just think if you have a degree it seems unlikely you'd pursue those careers unless there was no other option. There isn't any money or prestige tied to these jobs. Nor is their much conventional fulfillment, as you sometimes see professionals abandon high-paying careers to pursue teaching or healthcare for.

nimble pond
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You would be absolutely surprised. One of my neighbors has a chemistry degree and yet, of his own free will, turned to farming. One of my friends earned a medical degree while in the military, yet he became a cop after his service because he genuinely and passionately likes protecting those who are unable to protect themselves. There's a bit more of personality to these things than people generally realize.
Off-topic, but interestingly enough.. no matter how likely something sounds or may seem to you, nothing is guaranteed with people. They may do things that don't fit the pattern or generally come off to you as nonsensical. But as we may strive to make sense, we have a bit of nonsense in us too.

Anyway back to TES, I don't think Necromancy is exactly praised among the magical community, yet there are still some who turn an interest to it for a variety of purposes and/or goals, or whom simply relish in it.

pale walrus
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Ya know, you could actually see a battlemage serving in the Whiterun or Solitude guard, when you think about it. After all - the guard is a military or paramilitary organization. That means that they don't just patrol city streets and stand on the walls or watchtowers. They go out patrolling as well - think of the road north of the city, which has a patrol and a guard station. So undoubtedly having on staff a mage for every squad of, say, 5-6 guardsmen/troopers would be a smart move. And for the mage, it would be like being a physician who serves in a modern city police department - perhaps working in the coroner's office, participating in investigations of crime scenes or providing other sorts of support to the patrolmen and detectives.

nimble pond
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And like you have ranks too. Like you might have a more amateur mage guard that knows basic spells while out on patrol and then maybe an officer that is a bit more experienced.

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You'd still prob have scholars and court wizards for research and consultation by the town leaders in the governmental hierarchy of things..

tardy tiger
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Guards are the soldiers of whoever is controlling the place.

Logically there would be some mages who'd join but we don't really see much game wise. Same happens with Legion battlemages. ESOs MMO nature probably helps with seeing more Mages in the military

livid ingot
# nimble pond You would be absolutely surprised. One of my neighbors has a chemistry degree an...

Doesn't surprise me at all in our modern society where farming isn't a meagre back-breaking life of subsistence. But we are talking about a quasi-medieval society in Tamriel. And if you're starting a farm, you're not poor. And if your farm fails, you won't be chewing on leather through the next winter.
Becoming a policeman is a more proper analogy, but I still think it's a rather difficult one to draw considering the differences

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Necromancers would not really pursue their careers because they're prestigious. I suspect a lot of necromancers become necromancers out of intellectual curiosity or a thirst for power or both

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I think if you're a mage, and you have an urge to serve the public good, you go into the Shadow Legion, or the Temple, or the Guild

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And if guards require your services, they retrieve you from there

nimble pond
#

All of which is interesting debate, but are you telling me you're gonna be upset over having a few town guards, who happen to use magic against you? 🤨

pale walrus
#

Speaking of magic....am I the only person who had the impression magic in ES5 was effectively nerfed? A top level PC who specialized as a mage had power, but not as much as seemed 'proper' to me. I can't quantify this, but I felt my warrior PCs were waaaaaaay more badazz than my lone Altmer wizard.

livid ingot
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Who knows if I'd even notice if it was a thing in some game I was playing.

livid ingot
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Who knows if that's true but it makes enough sense.

tardy tiger
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I find magic's problem was more balance issues. things didn't scale well and you didn't have spellcrafting to fall back onto to abuse.

feral viper
#

Yeah. The underlying system in Skyrim is better, allowing for more behavioural variability and differentiation between spells.

It's just terribly balanced, and now enough is done to really make the superior system shine.

A nerf implies that there was an intention toning down of Magic. I think it was just unfinished and poorly balanced.

livid ingot
#

^ That could very well be the reason for magic underperforming as well

nimble pond
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Hmm. Well, I know they have arrows with magical shrapnel (exploding ice or fire arrows for example), but what about putting actual spells on the tips of arrows, basically combining bow+magic to play with. One spell could be when you shoot the arrow spell (this specific arrow would be silenced), wherever it lands it leaves a temporary magic tiny keyhole or eye, allowing you to see outward from wherever it lands, so you can scope out a room before enetering, watch enemy patterns from a safe distance, see around a tight corner without revealing yourself or your location, etc. Possibly adding the ability to shoot one additional arrow from the keyhole/eye itself at an enemy to take them out. Or idk, if anything, it could be a cool "power" you pickup for stealthy approaches.
Just a thought.

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Now this one would probably be more of a spell, basically when cast, you take "possession" of the body of whatever humanoid or creature you cast upon. Changing your view/hud to theirs (you see what they see, thru their eyes) and allowing you to freely control them for a limited time. Walk them right off a cliff if you wish. Force them to commit a crime. Whatever you can come with 🙂

pale walrus
#

I can understand a spell which takes possession of a lesser creature like a bird or mouse, allowing the possessor to use the creature and see thru its eyes. That could be a great spell for an assassin or thief. But to possess and control a sentient life form such as man, mer or betmer, I would imagine the spellcaster would have to be extremely powerful. I'm wondering as well if such a spell might be considered 'out of bounds' amongst most mage guilds/societies, akin to necromancy. This doesn't mean the spell would not be used, but anyone who does use it might get in severe trouble if caught. Maybe Jagar Tharn's exploits might serve as motivation for someone to develop such a spell. In fact, I bet you the Order of the Black Worm would love to have a spell like that.

pulsar root
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mind controlling lesser creatures is probably easier then say a complex mind like Mer,Human, Khajit etc etc. Weak minds/wills not withstanding.

nimble pond
#

It kind makes me think of how some of the illusion spells worked, and further unlocking perks as progressed level in the skill allowed yours casts to be effective on higher tier opponents. I think Conjuration had some of that too. Crazy gaining control of their souls, you would think that it'd be tougher than controlling the physical body. And I agree it would probably be considered "outlawed" among the more conservative mages and scholars. Which makes using it that much more fun 🙂 lol

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Another thought would be making inanimate objects come to life in a sense. Imagine your a bandit being chased and whacked by a rogue broom. Or a squadron of ruined books start flapping their pages and dive out at you in flight. 😳 Maye you could give them commands like a follower. A bit of a step up from telekinesis.

pale walrus
#

The broom would be very, very funny 🙂

feral viper
#

Whelp. My week is irreparably ruined.

Time to dive into inconsequential tirades about mechanical minutiae to distract myself from the realities of existence.

#

It's made even worse by the entirely randomised weapon drop system, meaning there's no guarantee you'll even HAVE a decent firearm with decent affects.

feral viper
#

Alright, without the context to explain the problem, I'll rephrase.

Combat is bad. And as the primary interaction in the games, it being bad is a core gameplay problem.

Enemies are HP sponges that become grueling, barely interactive slogs on anything but the highest difficulties, lack of interactive counter play means your options are limited to a meaningless slugging match, and an obtuse damage and resistance stats don't give any useful information to inform your decision making.

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In essence, combat in Bethesda games is just "Pick highest DPS weapon, and hold down attack while chugging whatever healing items you have".

And this has not only been systemic since the 90s, but has actively gotten WORSE since Skyrim.

Which does not bode well for the single most important gameplay dynamic of TES6.

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Now, a part of this problem is the entirely dysfunctional way Difficulty is approached. But that's not only a Bethesda problem, that's an industry wide issue they plagues basically every game.

Difficulty is handled as a 'Number go UP' dynamic instead of anything that drives greater player comprehension or interaction.

wide garnet
#

Geez, what spat in your bean curd?

feral viper
#

Anyway, the core problem for TES is the near total lack of counter play, the terrible control scheme, and the obtuse value formulas for damage and armour.

pulsar root
feral viper
#

Or allowed to be discussed here anyway.

#

So I will redirected my ire towards constructive criticism

stark flower
pale walrus
#

A surefire way of dealing effectively with unhappy news (other than the demise of a loved one) - cook something that you really enjoy. For me, it's pizza or pasta. I make a murderously good pizza (I don't indulge in all the 'topping' pollution) and I make one of the three best lasagna dishes in north america (frankly I think it's THE best.) An alternative - eat some chocolate. Dark chocolate (say 70% cacao) or milk chocolate with hazelnuts. Skip the snickers bars - get chocolate from somebody who doesn't use petroleum byproducts in their chocolate production. AND bringing this back to ES - why don't any of the Tamriel tribes have anything like chocolate in their cuisine? This probably goes a long way in explaining why all of them (except maybe the Dunmer) behave like primitive screwheads almost all the time.

pale walrus
feral viper
#

I prefer productivity over indulgence, personally.

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Which means, identifying a problem, laying out the reasons, and proposing solutions.

feral viper
#

With that in mind, identifying problems.

Problem A: the lack of counter play.

TES is better than most Bethesda titles in this regard, since it has Blocking as a core mechanic, but your options are still... Tank a Hit, or Block. That's it.

Even within Tanking a Hit, there's no real variability. You just want your AC or Damage Resistance effects to be as high as possible, and there's no way to work around different effects, behaviours, armour types, ect.

This lack of counter play results in every fight simply being a slugging match where you hope you can output more damage than you take, and chug healing items if you can't.

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At minimum, in order to address this problem I would say we need Dodge and Parry mechanics.

These are not new. These are not complicated. Active Dodging has been in video games since the 90s, and Parrying has been in plenty of games at this point to show it's application.

Ideally, I would take this even further, with a fully fledged out Stagger system, better Resource dynamics, and an entirely overhauled armour system, but that's a much longer rant

pale walrus
#

I found myself quite disappointed with Shield performance in ES5. If I used a shield to block a blow, I still took damage - just not quite as much. I saw no utility in it and switched to one handed or dual wield from then on. I would like a shield to be VERY protective - in fact, enhancing PC protection even against more skilled or deadly opponents. The shield effect where you could slam your opponent with it and moderately stun them had some merit, though it seemed a bit overdone to me.

feral viper
#

That's not entirely unrealistic though. There's a reason heavy impact weapons were a thing. Because it doesn't matter if you have a shield, of you take a heavy blow from a bardiche. In fact, some weapons like the Kanabo were designed directly in response to shelds, and could shatter your arm THROUGH the shield.

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Nothing should ever represent 100% protection, beyond simply 'Getting out of the way'. Which is where Dodge would come in.

#

But.. that also plays into part of an aspect of the A problem, and a bit of the C problem (armour and damage formulas).

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Because ultimately, a Shield functions the same way as Armour, just in a more active role. It doesn't STOP damage, it simply changes it's expression to make it more manageable.

ornate geode
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Im ngl

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I ABSOLUTELY hate Daggerfall but i unironically enjoyed Arena bc of a song i was listening to that i feel like really immersed me into the journey

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(screw you daggerfall, i wish every physical copy is burnt to ash and just delete all the digital copies permanently and ban it from the internet, worst game experience ive ever had)

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(id rather play through Dustborn and Gollum 10x back to back than replay Daggerfall)

radiant moss
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...what's with the df hate?

feral viper
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Someone got lost in the beginner dungeon.

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What's important is being able to understand, and articulate, why.

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Otherwise it's just hate for hates sake. And that's not a productive emotional response.

gloomy anchor
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Please remember there is a difference between constructive critique and bashing.

pale walrus
# feral viper That's not entirely unrealistic though. There's a reason heavy impact weapons we...

You are without question correct. The design contest between armor (including shields) and weaponry lasted for thousands of years, with efforts made on both sides to counter the best of what the other side had (heavier and more armor-cleaving focused weapons versus shields with metal rims, central bosses and crossgrained layers for the body and so forth.) My experience of ES5, though, pushed me towards dual wield and two handed weapons over single weapon and shield. I found that instead of protecting myself from damage (even partially), it benefited me more to simply focus on 'dishing it out' to the max. That just seems wrong to me. I'd rather the shield served more of a purpose, as I don't quite get the logic behind 'who is the bigger damage sponge' that ES5 essentially took (I think you said something to that effect already - sorry for the repeat.)

pulsar root
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I took the two handed weeapon approach because its what I wanted to take(Minus how unwieldly the two handers looked but thats besides the point)

eager remnant
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I don't mind reworking the combat system but I wouldn't want it to become too complex. My eye-hand coordination is abysmally bad. I avoid twitch-style games that require a lot of player skill. I'm also not a person who thinks on his feet. I'm more of a contemplative person (I've been known to formulate my answer to a question fifteen or twenty minutes after the question was asked). So if the combat was too complicated I'd want a "real-time-with-pause" system (similar to early Bioware games like Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 or Knights of the Old Republic) to go along with it.

feral viper
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Indeed, you can't go too complicated with it. The task is forming a balance between player control, and character variables, that allows a wide range of play styles and skill levels.

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In effect, the goal should be:

Systems which work together clearly and transparently to allow the Player to understand what is going on, and set reasonable expectations for any attempted action.

Actions which are variable enough to create counter play and engagement opportunities while also allowing for Character Skill to play a role

Controls which are concise and reliable.

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An example. Armour.

As it stands, Armour tells you absolutely nothing. You can't actually tell how much damage resistance an enemy has based on the armour their wearing. Because of the problems with how armour is approached, they way Skill interacts with it, and the obtuse formula used to determine damage reduction, your only response is basically 'Spray and Pray'.

Which, admittedly, is your only real response 99% of the time anyway.

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However, if the type of armour had actual meaning (plate is heavily resistant to Physical attacks, Leather is resistant to Magical attacks, etc) then seeing an enemy in a particular type of armour allows you to adapt your strategy to suit.

You know that your Dagger isn't going to serve you very well against someone in Plate, so you quickly swap out for a hammer. Or turn to Magic. Or try to avoid them entirely.

The Player recognising what their Characters skills are, and how they fit into any given circumstance. Rather than just always using the same response to every situation.

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Similarly, more actions that interact in more thoughtful ways would significantly increase the ebb and flow of combat.

If a Parry is a timed deflection, Perks that increase Attack Speed would both make you better at parrying, and less likely to BE Parried.

An actual Dodge action would allow you to play proper 'Unarmoured' characters, focusing on mobility rather than just turning a T-shirt into a breastplate.

Proper Stagger mechanics would allow you to control engagements by disabling or timing out some enemies while you focus on others. Instead of the brawl multi-actor combats devolve into in Skyrim.

pulsar root
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I don't think going something like Baldur's gate is a good idea. Nor do I really want something like KC:D(I hated it actually, the story was the only thing that made me try it)

feral viper
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Oh, absolutely not.

Though I have long been a fan of Analog Combat, I also recognise the unpopular nature of the idea.

So I think something far simpler is in order.

2 attacks.

Tap for Thrust. Hold for Swing.

It's not perfect, but it captures the basic sorts of actions you can take with literally every weapon you're going to be using.

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Beyond that, introduce Techniques, effectively expanding Powers into more direct actions.

Using the Bumpers (controller) or Alt/Ctrl, these are specific attack actions that do specific things. Things like Paralyzing Strike, Power Attack, a swift kick to the gonads.

Tap to use your assigned Technique or Power (or even Spell, you have an appropriate one). Hold to bring up a radial menu that allows you to quickly use another you've assigned.

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Effectively combining DooM's weapon Wheel, with Favourites, to allow you to create your own characters fighting style.

pale walrus
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What about PC stats such as strength or speed or agility that could potentially affect combat? This could be meaningful to dodging, parrying and outright damage.

feral viper
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Oh absolutely. Stats, Skills, and Perks is a whole other conversation though.

pulsar root
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Not inheritely no, depends on the execution so long as the game is meant for FUN and not trying to be a soulsborne like.

feral viper
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Well, yeah. Everything is ultimately interconnected. But core gameplay systems can be designed in isolation, and the stats layered into those interactions after.

And no. No Souls-like. I think those games have fundamentally damaged RPGs as a whole and have nothing worthwhile to offer.

pale walrus
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Any combat system that requires deft and skillfully timed manipulation of a keyboard (I play on PC) is a deal breaker for me. Another deal breaker - quests where time is an important factor.

feral viper
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Oh no, deftness wouldn't be necessary, outside maybe Parrying. Though even that has wiggle room. The speed of actions wouldn't need to be much faster or slower than what it currently is. It's just, you'd have more actions available and more ways to control the flow of things.

At its fastest, I'd imagine something like Darktide or Vermintide.

feral viper
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Basically, just a system that gives you more behaviours and variables and rewards comprehension and decision making, rather than the grueling slug-fest that combat currently is, or the precision timing and hitbox scumming of Souls-Like.

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For instance. Dodge, Party, Block as 3 Active Defense options, gives you 3 distinct ways to deal with incoming damage in a proactive way.

Blocking is simple, reliable, but limited to Shields. This means that you are inherently sacrificing some damage versatility or power in exchange for that easy active defense.

Parrying is the least outright protective, decently reliable, and done with weapons. It's simple, if you attack within a certain window of an enemy's attack, you parry This doesn't prevent damage, but it does reduce it. But so do they, since a Parry works both ways. So you have an offensive option that allows you to keep up pressure more directly without entirely sacrificing defense.

And finally, Dodging. The hardest to execute, but most effective. It's simple, you get out of the way. You can technically jank this now, but unreliable hitboxes and a lack of any sort of quick-step action means it's a total toss up if you manage to walk out of the way.

So this presents 3 active interactions which allow for the expression of different approaches to gameplay, and can be mixed and matched for more variety. Throw in Perks that make them easier to pull off, or more effective, and you can create an immense amount of variety on them alone.

eager remnant
feral viper
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So, you can see how, right out of the gate these changes would vastly improve combat.

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Now, add on to that 2 basic attack types. Thrust and Swing.

Thrust is engaged by Tapping the input, and is just a quick have with whatever you're holding. Or your first, if you're unarmed. It's less impactful, but there can be specialised Thrusting weapons.

Swing is done by Holding the Input, and is again what is says in the tin. It's slower, but the increased momentum means it's got more power behind it.

You could call these Light and Heavy attack, but I prefer Thrust and Swing. Why? Because these are the two core behaviours every weapon is going to use. They mean your input and control is clear and concise, not relying on flashy animation cycles. And they make it so you can reflect the variability of different weapons more naturally.

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Suddenly, a Hammer plays and feels different than a Dagger, or a Greatsword plays and feels different than a Spear.

And when you can reflect these sorts of differences, you can make the differences impactful through stats and damage types. Which in turn has increased value to Armour and general decision making.

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Without going too deep into the tangent, this simple change and it's overflow means that you now, as a player, have ways to react to particular encounters OFFENSIVELY as well as Defensively.

Up against a Skeleton? Well, your Thrusting Rapier probably isn't going to be great, so you may need to rethink your approach.

Up against a heavily armoured opponent? That Scimitar isn't going to be cutting through steel, so you're better off switching to something else.

It creates a dynamic where the player is presented with options, and challenges, and through understanding how those two intersect they can develop their own solutions.

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Instead of the answer always being use the same 3 attack cycles until the problem stops moving.

ornate geode
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i hate it with EVERY fiber of my being. Well not finish the game, i got to the uhhh quest where it branches off to the endings BUT that quest never spawned

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So i sat there, soft locked out of my mind, my time wasted, and just said screw this game

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I had enough of this poorly designed and buggy game

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Id rather walk over lego bricks than boot this game up again, heck, i downloaded it from steam just to leave a review to tell anyone to stay away.

Lets list some of the problems

Same textured walls that looks like the floor of a pig pen
terrible ingame map
bugs galore
terrible dungeon generation
puzzles that make no sense
Nearly empty world map that has no purpose outside of rng generated dungeons

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Sure its "experimental" or "pioneering" doesnt mean its good, i can mix ice popsicles with sardine juices, sure thats experimental but thats not exactly edible

feral viper
ornate geode
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To summarize, screw you daggerfall

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May you burn with ET and Concord in videogame purgatory

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Ya know atleast Arena was just monotonous but i was enjoying myself making spells and travelling from town to town but this just sucks more than your average Octopus and vacuum

feral viper
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Daggerfall has problems, I can't deny that. But so do most games from that era. I mean, in an absolute sense, so do most games TODAY. A perfect game has never been made. Closest is probably either Factirio, or Stardew Valley...

It's most lasting silver lining is arguably the best character creation system in RPGs. Something which, almost 30 years later, we are only just starting to see games manage to replicate even in part.

But that's been sort of a general theme with TES, and Bethesda as a whole. Every game is a deeply flawed end product, but they all (except Oblivion) contain a rare glimmer of brilliance that is almost impossible to find elsewhere in the industry.

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To that extent, they all (except Oblivion) still have objective value years and even decades after they were released. Even if the subjective experiences may be somewhat soured.

ornate geode
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So youre telling me the only good thing about Daggerfall is its character creation system

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Id rather have it burn either way if thats all its offering. people have done better nowadays

eager remnant
# ornate geode So youre telling me the only good thing about Daggerfall is its character creati...

I think there are several other good things in the game. Its fast travel system is more sophisticated than what we have in any of the other games, language skills were a fascinating (if underdeveloped) roleplaying feature, an interesting factional reputation system, several joinable factions (including 10 Knightly Orders and 8 Temples), Holidays, Banks, and a more sophisticated training system, to name just a few.

ornate geode
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None of those matters if the main like game cycle is so terrible

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Its so easy to get lost and the ingame dungeon map looks like someone served me the wrong food

feral viper
feral viper
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None of this Attack Cycles, flashy nonsense. Daggerfall let me attack how I wanted, when I wanted, in whatever order I wanted. All with more options and without god awful control scheme we've had for such things since.

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Alas, we are unlikely to ever see it's kind again.

pale walrus
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I think the discussion has stumbled onto some important things - even things that we can expect from ES6.

feral viper
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You say stumbled. I say, herded with the deftness of a drunken shepherd at sunset.

pale walrus
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LOL! Ok, fair enough. But think about it. BGS has publicly expressed great interest in returning to the general area of ES2. It was an important game for the studio and, as has been noted above, had quite a few very innovative features/capabilities. I bet BGS wants to go back to the setting to 'get it right' this time. I wouldn't be surprised if we see the combat system, character creation, fast travel system, language skills, factions & reputational protocol, holidays, etc..all come back in a new and improved form, while the game's shortcomings are properly addressed as well.

feral viper
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I doubt all of it will. But we may see some of it attempted again.

I am dubious about 'getting it right' though. They will certainly try, but I remain of the opinion that the direction of the setting from Oblivion onward ensures they will never be able to get it right. And returning to Daggerfall as a whole is a setup for the utmost banality in that regard.

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Mechanics, systems and ideas may have some legitimate merit. Though I'm dubious about Language Skills, on a practical level. But the setting... Not so much.

feral viper
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Fast Travel is doable, if the scale is significantly increased. The problem there being the Loading Screen issue, which remains much maligned in Starfield.

Combat, despite my lengthy dissertation regarding it, I do not expect to see significant or even meaningful improvements.

Character Creation shows more promise. Starfield in particular showed a movement towards more interesting creation systems.

Reputation I remain up in the air about. It's always been a great idea, but poorly executed. A single line progression is not how anything actually works, and all reputation systems I've ever seen have failed to actually add any real nuance to the dynamic.

tardy tiger
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I've honestly forgotten what reputation/fame does, Just Disposition?

Should really take factions into account I feel as I remember liking in Morrowind where some places would hate you for not being of their aligned factions. at least until you did the main quest and then like everyone was positive.

feral viper
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It basically just added a modifier to Disposition, and rarely gated access to quests or activities.

The problem is, especially in organizations like a guild, the prominent rise of one member most often causes tensions, rivalries, and internal political maneuvers.

And Reputation systems have never accounted for this. They're always just a positive benefit to all involved, in the process stripping everyone of character.

tardy tiger
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Should've probably just acted as like a modifier to gaining and losing Disposition, So if it was from a faction they hated it wouldn't make them like you but make any further loss worse.
Like i doubt Telvanni are going to like some random Pro-Imperial person be Nerevarine... if they care to even bother given their lack of action with things.

feral viper
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Indeed. You COULD build an interesting and engaging Reputation system, with both internal and external nuance.

Just, no one has yet.

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And in the grand scheme of things, I think it's a relatively low priority. Lots of other things to fix first.

pale walrus
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I can't remember a title I've played that had a reputation system with which I was completely satisfied. My guess is that such a system, if deeply developed, would be absolutely foundational to the entire game experience. For instance - and I'm almost certainly oversimplifying this to a grotesque extent - say your reputation can range between enemy, unliked/untrusted, ambivalent/neutral, mildly well disposed, and finally ally/friend. The developers will have to determine a range of speech responses and reactions for every NPC with which your PC might interact, based on that NPCs own characteristics, interests and allegiances. That's a LOT of work, and there's no guarantee that the work will be implemented properly. Don't get me wrong - I'm not against a deep reputation system. But I'll be VERY pleasantly surprised to see one in ES6.

pulsar root
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Having the world react to some of your activities is always a plus but with more "actual choice" goes on that increases even more so. For a more recent example Starfield has guards (If you go out and explore planets with bases controlled by pirates,spacers and ecliptic). Said guards(UC or FC) praise your actions and reward you with credits.

I think we should temper expectations at times with what Bethesda can do and well try not to expect revolutions every new BGS game comes out.

radiant moss
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You'd always end up getting the needed amount, though. Morgiah will always contact you after meeting Lady Magnessen (which is a really weird plot point but lets ignore that for now) at some point and will wait infinitely for you. After that, the royal family of Daggerfall opens up, Prince Lhotun contacts you about his missing brother, etc.

feral viper
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If you set your expectations as low as they can go, you're less likely to be disappointed.

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And sometimes, you even get pleasantly surprised.

night violet
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Had a person try to convince me today that it's ESO's fault it's been so long between main series Elder Scrolls games lol

eager remnant
night violet
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That's what I said

livid ingot
# night violet That's what I said

I think it's plausible that TES:O was meant to tide over fans of the series since BGS knew they wouldn't be developing the next game for some time. But they didn't delay TES VI because of TESO

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But yeah, you and Pseron Wyrd are both correct

eager remnant
night violet
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Oh that was meant as a confirmation that I had said the same and not saying you were sorry

pale walrus
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I have something of a different take. I believe (perhaps wrongly) that BGS created FO76 and ZoS created ESO as a deliberate attempt to move the FO and ES franchises to an MMO framework, giving them 'room' to develop new IP. It's taken lots of effort, but it looks like both MMO platforms have ultimately become successful. But this has not lessened interest in the single player framework for both IPs. I find this somewhat paradoxical.

feral viper
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Different target audiences, simple as that

pale walrus
feral viper
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It's mostly the social aspect for it, for me. Most of the friends I went to school with have either moved on, or turned out to be pretty terrible people, so I don't associate with them. My MMO friends, on the other hand, have stuck, and we still play games even 20 years later.

Though I think starting in the D&D, Real-time/Turn-based hybrid era of RPGs helped make MMOs more palatable for me from the onset.

pale walrus
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Side question for everyone here: what are your most and least favorite holds in Skyrim, and why?

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For me, my least favorite is the Reach. I found it bleak and bare (I realize this is the exact opposite of what some other folks felt.) My most favorite is more difficult - Falkreath hold was very pretty. So was the Rift, though the autumn colors were a little sad. The hold with Solitude (Hraafingar or something like that? I can't remember) was extremely pretty, but 'barren' in a way - those forests seemed mostly bereft of life, and when that road on the western edge of the hold comes to a dead stop at an invisible wall to prevent the PC from traveling into HR, it game me a very desolate feeling - my yearning to explore more was frustrated. Even The eastern Reach where Windhelm is located had its attractions - especially the southern part with that wierd geothermal valley. Overall, though, I think I'd have to pick Falkreath as my most favorite, with the Rift a close second.

livid ingot
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The Reach is badlands/canyon Hjaalmarch a swamp, Whiterun a grassland, Falkreath a thick pine forest, the Rift a autumn deciduous forest, Eastmarch a hotspring, and Winterhold a desolate tundra

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The Pale and Haafingar: umm

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Snowy forest and, uh, oh man I have nothing for Haafingar

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Somebody needs to defend these holds

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Actually the fact that I was so readily able to describe the Pale as a snowy forest means I've been too harsh and ought to offer it my apologies

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Haafingar truly last on my list

eager remnant
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My favorite hold is The Rift. In my very first playthrough I headed straight for The Rift as soon as I exited Helgen. I loved the area so much I spent that entire playthrough there (I didn't visit Riverwood or Whiterun until my second character). It is not only my favorite hold it is my favorite region in any Elder Scrolls game. I love the wonderful autumnal colors, the lakes, the rivers, the woods, all of it.

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My least favorite is Whiterun Hold. The flat, desolate-looking tundra landscape does not appeal to me at all. I use a mod that turns it into woodlands so I don't have to look at it.

feral viper
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Eastmarch. It has no defining characteristics, far and above the worst of the major cities, and basically no redeeming qualities what so ever. It's not stylistically engaging, it's not narratively interesting, and I find the only time I'm ever even THERE is passing through to somewhere I actually want to go.

Even Winterhold is more of a destination.

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The Reach is my favourite. A little sparse on vegetation, sure, but the river canyons lined by towering mountains? THATS the Skyrim the PGE sold me on.

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If Skyrim were entirely a mix of the Canyons of the Reach, but filled with the forests of the Rift, and then terminating in the glaciers of Winterhold, I would have been very happy indeed.

What we got wasn't BAD, especially by the standard of its immediate predecessor, but it was just alright.

pale walrus
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Excellent. The landscape is a very important part of ES for me.

feral viper
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Environment and landscape are very important to me as well. And... Well, a lot of Fantasy as a whole just doesn't hit the mark for me in that regard.

Morrowind was good. Warhammer ticks the boxes more often than not. But beyond that? I've actually been pretty consistently disappointed by landscapes and environments in Fantasy over the last 30 years.

livid ingot
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Nobody wants to defend Haafingar huh

pulsar root
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I don't really have a favorite, I like the more snowy areas tho

feral viper
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It's not great, but it's also not Eastmarch.

pulsar root
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Oh, yeah Solitude is a good city. Although realistically being on that mountain would make me.....anxious

livid ingot
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I wasn't even considering cities in my own judgement. 🤔 Solitude is nice, though.

tardy tiger
livid ingot
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I just can't think of Haafingar as having much character

feral viper
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Blackreach doesn't collapse. So we can handwave away the integrity of Solitude.

tardy tiger
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Only thing that stands out for Haafingar is really man made structures. Solitude and Dragon Bridge.

livid ingot
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And the Thalmor Embassy

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And the DLC vampire castle

feral viper
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Though, I suppose, we could also count Blackreach as a secret Hold...

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In which case, it wins for my favourite, hands down.

livid ingot
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I thought about mentioning that earlier! In which case, I agree

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Technically we should probably consider Solstheim as well

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Even if it's in Morrowind the province

feral viper
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True, though I would still rate it lower.

Honestly, outside of Raven Rock, Solsthiem isn't that interesting.

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While it was novel and interesting in Bloodmoon, I think it suffers in Dragonborn by largely just being MORE Skyrim. With just enough Morrowind at the start to trick you into thinking it's going to be different

livid ingot
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Rather than making it a glorified dungeon

feral viper
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Indeed. Though given the Daedric Planes we have seen (ESO included) maybe it's for the best that we only got a snapshot of Apocrypha.

livid ingot
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Don't want to force it to overstay it's welcome, eh? Yeah there's something to that ||cough Oblivion Gates||. But I'd like to think they would have made it a more diverse and interesting place if they were giving it the Shivering Isles treatment

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Also, if anyone wants to argue the Soul Cairn as a hold, then that is the worst in the whole game, hands down

feral viper
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Too mundane, not enough high concept.

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But I've not actually enjoyed the general art direction of TES SINCE Morrowind, and it's clear Bethesda wants something entirely different from what i want. So that's not a productive avenue of discussion.

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Point being, I think that a region is most memorable when it diverges radically from what we have gotten used to up to that point.

That's why Solsthiem was so impactful in Morrowind, and why Blackreach is so memorable in Skyrim

livid ingot
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I agree there, definitely

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It's also what made Shivering Isles so memorable in Oblivion. Although... SI could have probably benefited a bit more in original direction

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The prominence of mushrooms made it feel something like a Morrowind callback rather than it's own distinctive thing

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(Not unlike the Dragonborn DLC, in that sense)

feral viper
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Riveting stuff.

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The Gatekeeper was neat though, I'll give it that.

livid ingot
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I think you're being too harsh. SI was the best expansion the series ever got

feral viper
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I have very little positive to say about anything relating to Oblivion, DLC or otherwise.

Though I do have a special contempt for SI, neutering Sheogorath into the unfortunate 90s era commentary on mental health that he is now.

pale walrus
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Blackreach was STUNNING. That was definitely a coup in terms of creativity, and the BGS guys who created it should have received really big raises. Solitude was visually impressive from a distance as you approached it. The interior was good, though still underpopulated and not really 'lived in.' Agreed completely about Solstheim - a morrowind flirtation, then more skyrim. And the Soul Cairn? Interesting, but the invisible walls, the uniformity of terrain and the lack of genuine interaction with the Ideal Masters detracted from the experience. Finally, Apocrypha - missed opportunity. Could have done quite a bit more with it. Felt like a dungeon crawl instead of the exploration of a whole plane of existence in Oblivion.

feral viper
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Just like I think Heath Ledger was a terrible Joker, I think SI is overrated and offered nothing of any meaningful value.

livid ingot
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glances at mods
I mean, other than horse armor of course 😅

feral viper
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The ultimate in Gothic Horror DLCs, yes.

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A true glimpse into the sublime degradation and primal horror of greed and inequity. Horse Armour is to gaming what the Castle of Otranto is to literature. A sign of the terror to come.

livid ingot
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nervous laughter

feral viper
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Foundational Novella, by the way. Almost unreadable these days though.

livid ingot
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That's the one by, uh, Walpole right?

feral viper
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Also funny anecdote. The author, Horace Walpole, the CREATOR of the Gothic aesthetic... Did not pioneer the word. He called it Gloomth

livid ingot
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The first Gothic horror

feral viper
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Imagine if Gloomth had caught on as the name instead of Gothic.

livid ingot
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I only knew that offhand because Esoterica recently did a video about it. 😅

feral viper
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Hah, I hadn't seen that. Halloween special, I'm guessing?

livid ingot
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Yup

feral viper
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Last time I watched Esoterica, he was still doing his multipart series on Dee's magic.

livid ingot
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Some of his necromancy videos have good ideas to implement for TES magic/conjuration/necromancy

feral viper
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I think a lot of Fantasy magic systems could draw a lot of great ideas from historical magic systems.

Except, you know ... They would actually WORK in fantasy.

feral viper
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Anyway, back on to productive things, rather than me complaining about the creativity, or lack there of, of the art and setting...

Armour!

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Armour, as it stands, is a convoluted mess.

Item Armor rating = CEILING[ (base armor rating + item quality) × (1 + 0.4 × (skill + skill effect)/100) ] × (1 + unison perk† ) × (1 + Matching Set) × (1 + armor perk‡)

Can you make sense of that, in a moment by moment situation, to allow it to actually impact your decisions?

No. No you can't.

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And that's not even all of it, you've got the Damage Reduction formula on top of that.

pale walrus
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Just starting at the base armor rating, there's potential for problems. What I mean is this: it doesn't logically follow that skyrim's orcish heavy armor should be better than dwemer, which is better than steel, which is better than iron. It's too linear, too simplistic. I would prefer an arrangement where all armor sets other than ebony and daedric were almost equivalent, with some tradeoffs between them in terms of weight, cost, maintenance requirements, impedance to free movement and such. Even within a given 'species' of armor, there should be some variability with respect to quality and effectiveness - in other words, the stats of a given armor class should have a range within which an individual piece can vary.

feral viper
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Agreed. And I think there's plenty of room to play with there, but that, I think, needs to be loaded more towards the Crafting side of things.

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As far as combat goes...

KISS. Harm=Damage-AC.

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If you get hit for 4, and you know you have 14 AC, then you know they did 18 damage.

This gives you actual, clear, usable feedback you can use for decision making.

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Now, I think there's a bit more to do to really make such a change shine, but it's a start.

Simplifying the formula also makes damage and armour TYPES actually useful. Unlike in Fallout 4 and Starfield, which also use convoluted formulas that render strategic selection of weapons and damage types basically a meaningless novelty on screen, you'd actually be able to recognize and utilise known patterns to maximise outgoing, and minimize incoming damage.

Enemy wearing maille armour? Piercing and Bludgeon weapons are going to be your best bet.

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The goal always being a system that actually gives you USEFUL, ACTIONABLE information, and allows you to react and adjust to they.

pulsar root
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Yes but you should still be able to use the types of weapons or armor you want to use. These "tradeoffs" can't be too impeding thats its not worth using it.

Edit: This of course is moot if Bethesda does a transmog system but I can't see them doing that)

pale walrus
# pulsar root Yes but you should still be able to use the types of weapons or armor you want t...

Here's what I'm getting at. Say you're playing ES6 and you're strolling thru Craglorn. You have concluded that the armors you've been running into and employing don't really suit you and would prefer a particular tradeoff between weight, protection, maintenance cost (both frequency and absolute cost per maintenance session) and freedom of movement. By coincidence, as you are roaming the streets of Elinhir, you find an orc who is a reknowned blacksmith. You give him your requirements, he scratches his chin and says "OK, come back in a week." You do some minor quests nearby and come back 7 days later. The orc blacksmith has created for you a very interesting torso armor using orichalcum. It consists of a mail shirt with a segmented armor carapace over it (think 'lorica.) He tells you that he could have made it of steel, and the protection would have been the same but its maintenance intervals would have been more frequent and more costly. He could also have made it of dwemer metal, but it would have lost some of its freedom of movement, as dwemer metal in those proportions is a bit 'sticky.' In other words, you could have made the torso armor out of multiple different materials, but the results would have been slightly different with each material. It gives you as a player great freedom of choice in terms of style and play and avoids the extreme linearity of Skyrim's armor.

#

I also strongly support the idea of 'mix and match.' In other words, you might choose that Orcish/orichalcum 'medium' torso armor but prefer dwemer gauntlets, steel greaves and an elven helmet. I personally don't know if a 'matched' set of armor actually makes sense in the real world and would prefer this also apply in the game.

feral viper
#

I am, personally, very much of the idea that traditional RPG mindsets are fundamentally wrong in the regard of equipment.

This is largely born from an era of class mechanics, where your class used particular equipment dictated by whatever fantasy paradigm they were based on. Barbarians used Axes, Knights used Swords, Rangers used Bows, etc.

Problem is... No one, ever, has thought like that. It's an arbitrary Gigaxism born out of ignorance, and reinforced by tradition.

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Now, sure. If people want to play that way, they should be able to. But then play on Easy, and ignore meaningful mechanics to play your dress up, foam bat adventure game.

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Though, that gets into what started this whole tirade. Shattered Space's approach to Difficulty, and why I think it's inherently bad for TES and RPGs as a whole.

pale walrus
#

Did the Shattered Space approach appear to be an experiment, or an evolution that tracked with previous BGS work on earlier titles? If the latter, then I think we could have cause for concern with respect to ES6.

feral viper
#

Difficulty, at least in my mind, shouldn't just be about beating the player with a bigger stick. It should be about pushing the players ability to dance with the mechanics at play.

One of the things MMOs do vastly better in terms of difficulty, is the harder a dungeons setting the more important it is to know what does what, when.

pulsar root
#

The area where Shattered Space takes place has handcrafted but its also limited in scope due to dev timeline compared to an entire game. The gameplay options to change difficulty in related but again I think the procedural generated stuff has its weaknesses compared to "World Space full of handcrafted goodness"

feral viper
#

The issue is more... Enemies are just damage sponges, and difficulty is handled basically doing nothing more than making them hit you like a freight train, while you hit them like a wet noodle.

#

The actual combat mechanics aren't good enough to really do anything engaging with. And Starfield undeniably has the best shooting in a Bethesda game.

TES, by comparison, barely even HAS a functional combat system.

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So not only does it embody a general trend with difficulty in Bethesda's games, but TES doesn't even have the same relatively viable shooting mechanics to utilise.

You know, because it doesn't have automatic firearms.

#

So, something far more drastic is necessary. Both to address the core combat deficiencies, and the difficulty problem.

dim reef
#

Hello guys, how are you today? I hope that they are fine today! There is/are new news from Skyrim (?).

feral viper
#

I hear a frost is coming. Cold's never good for the crops.

#

Something something Skyrim Belongs to the Nords.

livid ingot
#

Looks like further development is on hold for the time being

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With respect to armor, this is one reason why I mourned the loss of durability. It was a great value to contribute to the choice a player makes for armor. Unfortunately, when it was used, it wasn't really utilized in an interesting way.

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Also, I think being able to craft armor kind of broke things. I'd maybe let players customize their armor, but not craft it whole from raw materials

#

It would be great if players had a reason to use whatever armor suits their fancy without strict progression, as was discussed above

#

Some traits that could vary:

  1. Expense
    This regulates access to certain armors in the early game. Not only can you not afford to buy it, but repairing it is also ridiculously expensive. It makes for very rewarding loot though.
  2. Durability
    The abuse armor can take. More expensive armors often need more maintenance, so this interacts frequently with cost.
  3. Enchantability
    Different materials interact with magic in different ways. Some materials might be capable of retaining vast reserves, others might be like oil to water.
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Other traits might play into decisions too, like Dwemer armor being illegal in the Empire.
So Dwemer armor might be expensive and illegal, with modest enchantability, but with off the charts durability.
Meanwhile Ebony might be highly expensive with low durability, but immense enchantability.

#

With Ebony offering some of the best protection you can buy of course

#

Players with a low armorer or low enchanting ability might find it too much a pain in the butt to maintain regularly, so they might prefer something like Dwemer instead

livid ingot
#

I think some sort of encumbrance trait ought to be considered for armor too. Just not weight (I think maybe weight should be done away with entirely). But, wearing more encumbering armor might reduce your running speed and jump distance, or reduce stamina and magicka regeneration.

#

Rogues and mages need more cost/benefit analysis when deciding to wear armor and if so what armor to wear

feral viper
#

Crafting is a much longer topic, but Armour Encumbrance is another Gigaxism that is both wrong, and actively detrimental to game design.

#

In fact, the evidence indicates that wearing armour is LESS encumbering than wearing the same weight on your back. Making armour less encumbering per pound than a backpack

livid ingot
#

Right, because when you wear armor the weight is more distributed across your shoulders, thighs, and head

#

The thing with weight though, there is no real light/medium/heavy paradigm. All armor was built to be as light as possible in return for the protection offered. If you could afford it you always went for the better stuff. Weight isn't even a good representative of quality. A suit of mail could be heavier than a similar suit of plate.

feral viper
#

Oh absolutely. And I'd do away with those distinctions too.

livid ingot
#

Now, armor is often seen as being far more restrictive than it actually is. But it still restricts you to some extent. Your peripheral vision, your hearing, your flexibility, your heat regulation, your ability to swim, etc.
It's not like armor will be so encumbering that it forces you to walk or somehow roll more slowly (like is depicted in the Fromsoftware games) but it does come with costs. The puzzle is how (if at all) to depict such costs in a game without making it unplayable.
I.E. Olympians can do most of their sports in armor. But they will almost universally perform better without wearing it.

pulsar root
#

I just don't like durability on armor as a feature. Its just an annoyance, as a gold sink I understand that aspect(Or currency sink for economic reasons). While I don't think looking for the resources to make the armor/weapons(Honestly, its probably the worst part of crafting but its very common in games).

I did like you could upgrade them(Increase their damage/armor ratings).

pale walrus
#

Something I'd like to see removed: does everyone remember how in Skyrim you could take armor made of any material and upgrade it to the point where attacks on you would be reduced to the point that they would only do 20% of intended damage? This applied to ALL armors, which meant that at a certain level of upgrading, all the armors became essentially equal. I don't think this is logical, as it effectively reduces armor to a fashion choice. Furthermore, there should be certain materials which are the absolute best for protection - in particular, ebony (and its daedric derivative.) I'd also like it to be prohibitevily expensive and rare (and even more so with Daedric.)

feral viper
feral viper
noble verge
#

The problem with durability is that it also affects NPC' gear.

#

I remember once when I did the Oblivion quest to escort Viranus Donton, he took enough damage to break his steel greaves, and from that point on he stopped wearing anything on his legs.

feral viper
#

Yeah, there are a lot of problems with how Durability has been handled in the past.

For one, it's been a flat tax on gameplay. Do things, your equipment takes damage, you need to take to enough of your gameplay to fix the things that break just by playing the game. End of story.

The second issue is, it's never been of any functional value to your ENEMIES. They simply die to quickly for it to matter, even in the Morrowind era of Corrode spells.

Third, it's crippling to Companions, because they DO live long enough, and there's no way to accomodate it.

#

Now... The sad reality is, and I'm going to sound like a broken record here... That all of Durability's problems stem from just how bad the combat systems in TES are.

The Gameplay Tax problem is born out of the total lack of decision making or counter play in the game.

The lack of impact to enemies is born out of the lack of variables available due to the superficial, one dimensional ham-bat damage and armour approach.

And the over-impact on Companions is due to the terrible combat AI (born out of the former problems) and the need for constant active intervention in countering the raw gameplay tax of the mechanic.

#

The question then becomes... How do you fix it?

I think you can address the problem through a few changes.

1: attach Durability to Improvements. If Durability drops to 0, the item doesn't break, it drops a Quality level. So Superior becomes Tempered, Tempered becomes Normal, etc.

Second, make it so Durability loss is directly attached to Damage, and Armour. If Armour stops 10 damage, the weapon takes 10 durability loss. This way you encourage using the correct tool for the correct job, and reward smart players.

Third, make Repair, or rather Maintenance, an automatic Rest Activity. So while you can't IMPROVE an item by resting, you can recover the durability of that quality level.

feral viper
#

Point is, to make it something that has impact but isn't a tax on gameplay. Something they the player can directly engage with and is rewarded for engaging with. And something that opens up new dynamics to explore.

pale walrus
#

Is it possible to make durability dependent on the nature of the attack? In other words - you're strolling around HF. Say you're on the shores of Iliac Bay, with a fishing pole and tackle box. Suddenly, a dreugh jumps out of the water, says "You're Ugly" and starts swinging at you with his claws. Your shield - made of steel - absorbs several blows well but does get nicked and dented some, and you clobber the dreugh. As you gather yourself and start walking back to your fishing gear, a Giant leaps out of the bushes behind the beach and says "You Smell Bad" and comes at you. Your shield gets badly banged up but you manage to slay the Giant. As you take stock of things, a crazed wizard runs up to you and says "Your Mother Dresses You Funny" and starts shooting fireballs and lightning bolts at you. Naturally you are awesome and slay the magic guy, but your shield took the brunt of the magical attacks.

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One could argue that the dreugh attack did the mildest damage to the shield, based on his strength and his weaponry. The giant did much more because of his strength and the mass of his club. And the sorceror did a totally different kind of damage to your shield - mostly thermal. Is it possible to account for all of these individually to determine the condition of the shield beyond some simplistic 'hit point' formulation?

pale walrus
#

Now this is kinda interesting - it seems BGS released an image on november 11th to celebrate the 13th anniversary of the original release of ES5. There are multiple familiar things in the image - various weapons and a dragon priest mask, for instance. But in the top left is a carapace that people are claiming is of Redguard design. https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/the-elder-scrolls-6-bethesda-setting-hammerfell/

ComicBook.com
tfischer
The Elder Scrolls 6 Tease May Reveal Huge Detail Fans Have Been Wai...

The Elder Scrolls 6 fans have been dying to know where the game is going to be set, and Bethesda may have finally spilled the beans.

feral viper
#

The Nov11 thing still grinds my gears... But there's no changing it so I have to internalize the rage.

#

I stand by my position that 2 provinces would be a mistake though.

feral viper
# pale walrus Is it possible to make durability dependent on the nature of the attack? In othe...

The sort of system I envision is similar.

Effectively, there are damage Types, which are countered by Armour Types. When you take a hit, the armour value decreases (or converts, whole other conversation) the damage based on the armour.

Then, for durability, the Armour takes a bit equal to the damage that gets through, and the weapon takes a hit equal to the damage stopped.

The impetus on the player, then, is to recognise what is good in what situation, and use their tools most effectively.

eager remnant
pulsar root
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That armor on the top left looks like the armor Solitude guard wears, not necessarily Redguard armor not sure what the article is implying. and Yeah One big zone of Hammerfel could be crazy big.

feral viper
noble verge
#

I also recognize a Steel Warhammer, Glass Sword, and Nightingale Blade.

feral viper
nimble pond
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I'd appreciate more HUD interaction. Like if someone punches you in the face, your view may be blocked partially depending on which eye they aimed their fist at. Maybe a lil red tint (blood) in your vision if you are hurt bad. Maybe even introduce 'falling' or being knocked down (not paralyzed). Maybe you take a tumble and roll a couple of times, hud camera going round and round as you roll. Blurriness from side effects like poison.

nimble pond
nimble pond
#

You throw the color "red" into anything on TES and they're gonna go crazy with it

sly inlet
#

Can someone tell me why there are no official silt strider plushies

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I want one 😭

sly inlet
#

Almost like how the souls series of games have different stats for different attack types and defense against them

pale walrus
#

Just saw the latest TIMENG video on YT. All the thieves guild 'radiant' quests to steal various items in Skyrim? All wasted opportunities. Instead of them being just "go and fetch" quests, each one could have been its own "Maltese Falcon" or "Ocean's 11" or similar kind of story. It's a matter of putting the work in and writing a good story.

tardy tiger
#

That's really for the hold quest then the jobs to unlock the quest.
radiants work best for job quests so people can still do work with mercenary factions and thieves guild factions.

sick light
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I will write a script for part 6 of the scrolls if the studio signs a contract with me

feral viper
#

Hah, jokes on you. I've already written a script for TES6 through 10.

sick light
#

I'm not kidding, I'll write a script, a new game won't appear without a script, I can write it

feral viper
#

At this stage, the core plot is likely already written.

pale walrus
#

I heard the ES6 core quest was about the recovery of the legendary Horse Armor of Akatosh.... 😉

pulsar root
nimble pond
#

The script involves fighting the super arch-enemy thalmor, in their giant power ranger styled mech they've assembled from the towers. And here you are standing before a colossal thalmor robot thousands of feet tall and about to stomp you out of existence. But wait.. the real hero of legend who is present in every TES game appears.. it is M'aiq! He reveals he's actually a robot created to save the world when everything else is lost. You hop inside as M'aiq activates height alteration. Now you are face-to-face with the thalmor machine as you peer out thru M'aiqs eyes, surrounded by levers and switches. It is time to do battle and save all of Tamriel as a giant robotic Khajiit!

wide garnet
nimble pond
#

Activating moon sugar mini-gun

pale walrus
#

About the musical score for ES6 - somebody has been overlooked who has demonstrated mastery over multiple music genres and has scored dozens of films. Howard Shore. All of you know Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. His range is much broader than that, though. A great example - the score for 1997's "Cop Land."

opaque ingot
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Hello

#

Bretons and non bretons

nimble pond
#

Sword-singing is going to end up cutting Hammerfell in half. Further fragmenting the Redguard people.

pale walrus
#

That actually might be interesting. From a geographic perspective, slicing the province in half would either create a canal from the Iliac Bay to the southern sea or a channel from the western ocean all the way to the Brena river basin.

feral viper
#

Bring the Rourken Dwemer back. Inject some proper Atheism into the setting.

#

None of that soft Psijic nonsense.

feral viper
#

That could actually be an interesting dichotomy to explore. The self-imposed exile of the Rourken being driven by Dumac's tolerance of the religious Chimer. Make the Rourken exiles radical antitheists who actively opposed the worship of the Aedra and Daedra

nimble pond
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Shehai's should be outlawed. That much power does not come without consequence. Things are going to hear you whom you don't want to attract. That's the problem with them, every time they use it, it comes with a cost, like shedding of skin, building up the unsoul till it awakens again from it's undersea depth in the deepest, darkest part. Might as well be both the protagonist and antagonist of your own story.

feral viper
#

For the most part, they don't seem any more powerful than conventional magic.

#

Which, we should remember, is capable of altering time and deposing gods, at the extreme upper end.

nimble pond
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True, but yk how it's gonna be. Each province gets this new doomsday terror. Although I'm not sure what rank soul magic would be either

nimble pond
noble verge
bleak silo
#

it would be funny if the aldmeri dominion got the left-handed elf treatment

pale walrus
nimble pond
#

Next-gen of the sea elves lol

feral viper
#

It would be funny if the Altmeri Dominion won, and all those Nordicist colonials were put in their place.

#

Tamriel belongs to the Mer.

pulsar root
#

I'd be shocked if we were going there but... I don't think its likely.

tardy tiger
feral viper
#

As I've said many times, I highly doubt that Bethesda is going to go anywhere near what I'd like to see as a direction. Even with ESO, it's pretty clear that anything unexpected, novel, or IMO even particularly creative is off the table.

Still, considering the amount of pro-Mannish cheerleading in the community, SOMEONE has to stand up for the Mer. And I will be that person, even if I doubt the setting is salvageable.

#

If for no other reason than the Mer are a slight touch more difficult to fall into one dimensional tropes with, and actually require a little writing to represent.

night violet
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Please Bethesda, let us have a cool large feline companion like a panther or a lion.

#

The dogs in Skyrim weren't the best

feral viper
#

All dogs are amazing dogs.

nimble pond
#

I want a Gila Monster as a pet

nimble pond
pulsar root
#

No need to punish Mer. Punish the Thalmor.

feral viper
#

The Thalmor are a natural product of Tamriel's sociopolitical climate, and the apologism of centuries of Human abuse and genocide. The only way to ever defeat those conditions, is either the eradication of the victims (the Mer) or the acknowledgement of the crimes of the Humans. Starting with Talos.

#

But as Bethesda and ZOS are entirely comfortable constantly making the Mer the villains, and handwaving away the egregious crimes of Nords, Redguard and Imperials alike, it's far more likely the natural products of the world they have created will hand handwaved away as well.

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In fact, I fully expect to learn some convoluted reason why the Left-handers were totally the bad guys, and the Yokudans were justified in their genocide. Just like we learned with the Nords and the Falmer, and the Imperials and the Ayleids.

#

And I say 'Learned' with the heaviest of sarcasm, since both explanations were terrible.

#

I can only hope that if the franchise survives long enough, and we ever see a Merish province again, they don't just pull a tacky 'Our elves are edgy' schtick and make them thinly veiled villains.

But it is not a strong hope.

tepid night
#

Do you guys think a new creatively rich studio with the kind of talent bethesda had is possible anymore?

#

Culture is in such a weird bind and nothing good is valued

feral viper
#

Define 'good'.

pulsar root
#

Creativity hasn't gone anywhere, stifled but thats mostly game dev being corporate(Which is off topicish)

feral viper
#

One can always disagree with the direction of things, though even I wouldn't go so far as to say nothing good is valued.

Well, outside of a few select circumstances which are very much not allowed on this discord...

I'd also contest that Bethesda is creatively rich. They're not creatively bankrupt, certainly, but rich? Then you'd have to define what you mean by rich. I'd say they've been creatively 'safe' for two decades now.

#

I will agree with the death of creativity and artistry in architecture though. Modern architecture is souless, sterile hospital chique, and I cannot wait for a neo-neo Gothic revolution.

sly inlet
#

The Thalmor are just reactionaries

feral viper
feral viper
#

But that's only part of the problem. Because while these things can be explained in universe, and the in universe discourse around them be nuanced, the problem is BETHESDA (and ZOS) who has drunk the koolaid as it were.

Actively writing the Elves as the bad guys, and absolving the Humans of culpability at every turn.

sly inlet
#

I think it’s hard for a human not to vilify them when they are trying to take revenge against actions from 100s of years ago while also taking the opportunity to screw over fellow Elves in Valenwood and the Khajiit in Elsweyr

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You can’t leave out the heavy amount of eugenicists in Thalmor culture, they don’t just want revenge on humans I think, I think they also want revenge on “race traitors”

#

There’s a reason the Dunmer and Chimer view them so poorly

feral viper
#

Indeed. I fully expect the Left-handers to be recontextualised as the villains of the story, and the Yokudans as justified.

Because even when we DO get Elven perspectives, it's always 'Yeah, we're terrible people'.

sly inlet
#

Eh I doubt that tbh, Nords were definitely the villains in the snow elf genocide in skyrim

feral viper
#

Unless the consensus of the lore community has changed in the 4 months since I abandoned it, your position there is very uncommon.

sly inlet
#

It’s funny you say that too given the fact that ESO is extremely generous with Bosmeri culture

sly inlet
feral viper
#

Calling what ESO has for the Bosmer 'culture' is being generous.

gloomy anchor
#

Good Morning everyone

sly inlet
feral viper
# sly inlet Really? I always saw it that way

It was up in the air for many years, between Morrowind and Skyrim. But once Skyrim came out it almost universally switched to 'The Snow Elves tried to steal a WMD and use it on innocent refugees. Snow Elves bad'.

sly inlet
#

Maybe it’s just the case that Altmer culture is bad for anyone who is not Altmer

feral viper
#

Nevermind that the entire Eye of Magnus narrative has so many holes in it, you couldn't actually use it to drain stock.

sly inlet
feral viper
#

I was a part of the lore community for many, many years. I'm just relating the result of conversations and discussions over two decades of being in that community.

sly inlet
#

I always viewed it as something like the Reichstag Fire

#

That they were already being oppressed and the Night Of Tears was just an excuse to genocide them

feral viper
#

Did I ever agree with it? No.

The Eye of Magnus story in particular causes so many issues that leaves the only reasonable conclusions as 'Most of the story is missing' or 'Everyone involved was an idiot'.

sly inlet
#

Yeah personally I never thought about that being the case but maybe others do

#

I don’t think Bethesda is as human centric as you say they are though

#

Beyond them kind of refusing to let us ask older elves questions about history directly

feral viper
#

This, coupled with not great writing (Fallout and Starfield are, at this point, far better written than TES) leads to a major representative problem regarding Mer in the setting.

sly inlet
#

Yeah I mean you could say that but it’s really only become a thing in Skyrim, and arguably Oblivion with the Ayleids but they are extinct so idk if they should count, the Dunmer right to self determination is one of the biggest things highlighted in Morrowind

feral viper
#

Yeah, and Morrowind was the height of writing for the entire franchise. 23 years ago.

sly inlet
feral viper
#

I mean, just look at what happened with the Dwemer.

They went from aloof but intellectually consistent people to cruel slavers and abusers of refugees. Why? Because Elf am Bad.

feral viper
sly inlet
#

That’s definitely a stretch but ok

sly inlet
#

ESO has the best writing since Morrowind

feral viper
#

I do not. ESO is better than Bethesda's TES in every way. And it's still more bad than good.

stark flower
#

Friendly reminder to keep it civil

feral viper
#

ESO started strong. While most of the cultures in it were bland, it did have the Argonians and Khajit. Though they were hamstrung by poor art direction, and the overall scale was skewed by just how bad Bosmer and Bretons were.

Since then, though, they've basically just chased trends, nostalgia, and done nothing particularly thoughtful of interesting

sly inlet
feral viper
#

You aren't helping your case. All of those are terrible.

#

Though, the Druid angle is even worse, as when they brought back Druids, they were tacky D&D nature Druids.

spare anchor
sly inlet
#

My point is that all of the races get villainized when they get spotlight

#

A lot of writing is about Empire overreach

#

But you never say “because cyrodiil is evil”

feral viper
#

Do you even know how many people actively argue that the Empire is nothing but a Thalmor puppet and needs to be destroyed, simply because of Skyrim?

Yes, people DO say that the Empire is evil.

sly inlet
feral viper
#

All because it signed a peace treaty and banned worship of warmongering despot.

sly inlet
#

Personally I’m pro empire

feral viper
#

And the Stormcloaks are just as bad as the Thalmor, but they are painted as heroes

sly inlet
#

Only if you look skin deep

#

You aren’t meant to realize they are bigoted til they pull you in

feral viper
#

But I'm done with this. The writing in TES is irredeemable , and I've abandoned the setting.

As I've said, only the mechanics matter. TESs brilliance no longer lies in the world, but only in the game.

sly inlet
#

That’s why Ulfric does a heroic monologue in the beginning, he’s trying to rope you into thinking he’s the hero

sly inlet
feral viper
#

I'm complaining about it. Not arguing.

It's the most recent writing (Ithelia) that made me quit.

tardy tiger
sly inlet
sly inlet
tardy tiger
sly inlet
#

It’s more or less because a bunch of the civil war was cut from the game

tardy tiger
#

Yeah but that part isn't to do with the Civil wars cuts. The quest were built around the Legion being playable not the Stormcloaks.

sly inlet
#

I imagine that would have been fixed with more civil war stuff is what I meant

tardy tiger
sly inlet
#

I feel like more than anything they just didn’t get into the game rather than that they don’t exist

tardy tiger
sly inlet
#

There’s not really anything in Oblivion that suggests to me that they don’t exist

sly inlet
#

I do think that Morrowind does have a governor present though

#

Also Redguard’s main villain is a governor too I believe

feral viper
# sly inlet Kid named Shadowkey

Yes, and they took the most basic, pop culture route in exploring causal uncertainty, mixing it with the most basic, pop culture model of multiverse theory.

That's the whole PROBLEM. ESO takes interesting ideas, and almost always develops them in the least interesting way, leaning on safe pop culture trends that are instantly recognisable rather than thought provoking or distinct.

feral viper
# tardy tiger Does remind me that the Stormcloaks don't feel like they were intended to be a p...

The entire Civil War feels like they were just chasing the (undeserved) praise of New Vegas. I'm not even sure if the timeline even adds up for that, but it's what it feels like. I have double checked, the timeline almost certainly doesn't add up, unless the entire civil war was written and integrated into the game in under 18 months. Which, it does kinda feel like, but I find unlikely.

Though, this is also the game that can't even establish its main antagonists goals, so reading intent is very difficult.

#

So no, TES has gone from its brief glimmer of novelty and an interesting world between 1998 and 2002, and is now just a hollow shell of big standard fantasy tropes with nothing to actually distinguish it from the pack.

Bethesda's still got brilliance shining through on game design, but the setting has no more value outside of disappointment for me.

feral viper
#

With that in mind, and to actually be productive, back to something that shows that brilliance, even if it's been poorly handled so far.

Item Parts, and Crafting.

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Both Fallout 4 and Starfield have extensively made use of the newer system which combines distinct parts of items to create a particular item. Rather than every single gun with every single part being a distinct item, the item is assembled out of the parts on demand (grossly oversimplifying).

Now, this approach is brilliant, but I don't think it's being used to it's real potential.

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For one, it's only really used on Weapons. Which is fine, especially with guns, but more historical weapons tend to have fewer moving parts and modification elements. Typically, they can really be broken down into 2-3 actual parts.

A sword, for instance, is a Blade, a Hilt and a Guard.

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Armour, on the other hand, can consist of anything from 2, to 500 parts.

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So, taking the crafting approach and applying it to Armour, would allow you to keep the number of equipment items low, but allow for far more customization than anything that's come before.

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The system is already there. Bethesda's already done the work creating it. You're just using it smarter.

nimble pond
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Just need some Kung Pow, breaking swords and shields in half with your fist! Punching holes thru steel armor. Ripping an opponent's arm clear off and then proceeding to beat him in the head with his own arm.

wide garnet
nimble pond
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Would love some melee-magic spells to boot too. Temporarily turn my firsts into pure iron or burning so hot your fists melt right thru their armor.

nimble pond
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Also, can we change up dagger design, just because..
A hybrid thing, one side is straight blade, other side is hooked or claw-like. Lastly the middle where you hold it, metal brick with spikes over the knuckles, like what you see on hammers/maces. Basically 3-in-1 dagger. Have these as your duel weapons.

nimble pond
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So if it's hammerfell I think it's safe to say your power would be sword-singing shehainigans. But if it's high rock or both provinces, what would the high rock player power be? Drudic-like animal powers and/or transformations, abilities pertaining to nature, which also could probably involve the former?

nimble pond
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And then as far as dragons go, there probably will be a couple. I know of one in Hammerfell who Cyrus didn't truly kill. Nahfahlaar. He'll probably be back.

left depot
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Any groups on xbox looking for extra players for questing? North America server

eager remnant
left depot
eager remnant
opaque ingot
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i felt like the only thing i disliked was the focus on y'ffre. i woulda liked it if there were obscure gods they had. maybe something not mentioned since daggerfall

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https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Druids#Practices i like their practices, but i mean we already have y'ffre worship with bosmer

Lore:Druids

Druids (also known as vinebeards) are children of the land whose kind have their origins in ancient High Rock. They are practitioners of Y'ffre's True Way (also known as Druidism), in which one is to lead a life connecting with, valuing, and stewarding the growth of the natural world referred to as the Green. The eponymous god takes the forefron...

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i wanted something more like what if we got something like Druagaa the old Goddess of Flowers in their pantheon

nimble pond
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I wish it was more like only druids could tap into the more "forbidden" and darker parts in nature.
And then you have the Druids who perverse nature itself with their abilities and spells.

noble verge
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Between the ethnic cleansings of any elves they deemed impure, the murders and massacres of anyone who dissented, the implied internal strife in the interim, and getting a ton of their own people killed in the Great War just so they can strut around the Empire to sate their bruised egos, the Thalmor are clearly not good for the elves.

pale walrus
nimble pond
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Yk I just wondered. Is there some single mega-sized Argonian in Black Marsh? Godzilla-like? That would be kinda cool. King lizard. All charged up on Hist bayou juice.

feral viper
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Druids were pagan priests and record keeper, not nature living magicians who kept a balance.

feral viper
sly inlet
feral viper
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Though, at this point, between the Bosmer, Nords, Altmer, Bretons, Imperials, Akaviri, Dwemer, Orcs, rtc... so much work just to make it bearable, I agree with the Thalmor.

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Burn it down and start over.

noble verge
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The signature faction will be the "Stormcrown Eternals'.

feral viper
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I'd be behind that 110% if I had any confidence in Bethesda's ability to engage in thoughtful religious commentary.

But they have yet to give me any reason to believe that.

pulsar root
nimble pond
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If we do get our own kingdom, I thoroughly expect (even though I hold no expectations) to be able to have others publicly executed. 🍿
A torture chamber would be sweet too, stretchers and all that.

paper prism
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I'm curious... Thinking of drawing my own video thumbnails for my TES gameplay (not a self-ad, hear me out) and was wondering what "style" of drawings/art people think of when thinking about The Elder Scrolls... Feel free to be as brief or detailed as you want, or if you have more than one answer that's cool too! Thanks 🙂

pale walrus
paper prism
pale walrus
paper prism
nimble pond
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I forget, is there a realm or a place that is like, all elder scrolls, past, present, and future? And also has an "author" of all these stories, present, whoever that would be, maybe they don't have a face? Idk.
Despite what is said 'currently' in the lore about them, I disagree. I think they do have an author, and that it goes before & beyond even Anu & Padomay, if not them being a product of the scrolls themselves, like most everything in it's way. A 'hidden' or currently unknown being.

livid ingot
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As for an author, people used to put forward ideas like the Aedra were the authors, or Lorkhan, or Magnus, or what-have-you.

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It's also been put forward that the Elder Scrolls are fourth-wall breaking source code for the games

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I don't think any of those ideas hold much water anymore though.

pale walrus
pale walrus
nimble pond
nimble pond
nimble pond
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But then again, the scrolls could be well, closest definition, "echoes." Which is kinda boring. But like AI, they are able to forsee 'probable' futures too, which could be why some end up being wrong. That, or the scrolls/echoes are mixed up with other scrolls/echoes from parallel times.

pale walrus
feral viper
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The Scrolls, per current canon, are basically impossible to count and keep track of. Even when they were mostly housed in the Imperial Library, every new count of the shelves would yield another number, and different people would see different things even if they read the same scrolls.

However, during the Great War, they all vanished from the library. So no one actually knows where they are now, how many there even are, or how they move about.

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This is another reason why Ithelia was basically a waste of a plot, because the nature of the Scrolls already established that potential futures were constantly in flux due to the self determinism of mortals. Didn't even need an entire new Prince to confirm free will exists.

pale walrus
# feral viper The Scrolls, per current canon, are basically impossible to count and keep track...

But a skilled writer (or group of story writers) could conceivably spin a yarn around a 'first scroll' which presumably 'set the stage' for the beginning of time in the current Kalpa. Maybe this first scroll was created at the very end of the dawn era or the beginning of the Merethic. One could imagine a story whereby any alterations to that scroll (were there a method to do so) could ripple across time (forward and backward from when the alteration took place) and affect every scroll after the start of the Merethic. In effect, it could rewrite history and alter reality. With the right set of story developers, it could be a great premise for a new ES title.

nimble pond
# feral viper The Scrolls, per current canon, are basically impossible to count and keep track...

Interesting they vanish during the Great War, specifically. As if to suggest war will lead to the extinction of everything. Maybe when the people took that turn to the Great War event, that was it, all roads, however varied, will now lead to the inevitable extinction. No more scrolls.

Then again scrolls did pop up again in our playthru of Skyrim.

Buy still, the sudden vanishing of all of them from that place feels like some sort of symbolism.

pale walrus
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Wait - somebody took those scrolls. During the Great War, it was either the Thalmor or the Imperials. OR: when the Culling was underway, maybe some Daedric Lord hopped thru the gate and grabbed them, or demanded them as payment for sending a daedric horde thru the portal.

nimble pond
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Could be that too. Strange how no one would be aware of it though.

pale walrus
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Maybe the Thalmor who led the invasion of Cyrodiil cut a private deal with that Daedric Lord. Nobody needed to know about it except the two parties involved.

nimble pond
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But it does note the Imperial City was sacked. So I'm inclined to agree maybe it was stolen and now the Thalmor secretly posses them. They are so obsessed with that sort of thing, I could see them being a part of their ultimate plan. Unless ofc the scrolls themselves are somewhat.. 'sentient' sensing the danger, vanished themselves for protection from the Thalmor.
Which maybe is why different people see different things in them, like while you are looking into the scrolls, they are looking back into you. Maybe it doesn't matter which scroll you pick up, but only whom it is gazing upon it?
No. Not quite. The scrolls do matter, however it can show a different perspective on the topic of the scroll based on who is looking into, like it's looking at you and determining that for you to see. Like an invisible ink for only your eyes?

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As for the count always changing, most likely the scrolls adjust themselves as the future is constantly in motion and changing based on past events. Constantly gauging the future. So I'd say there probably is a first elder scroll, somewhere.

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The dwemer had the right idea, let a machine extract the information or develop a special lense that protects your eyes from blindness.

pale walrus
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If the scrolls are indeed sentient (at least to some degree), I guess they could 'hide' from danger. Their reacting differently to different individuals reinforces this. But perhaps despite their sentience the scrolls can be 'trapped.' This might require the strength of an immortal such as a daedric prince. Regardless - you've found something potentially very cool.

nimble pond
# pale walrus If the scrolls are indeed sentient (at least to some degree), I guess they could...

I know you and others like contemplating on this stuff, here's a 6-hour video that just released talking all about TESVI.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3UykGO1YVw

YouTube
FudgeMuppet
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▶ Play video
nimble pond
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Anyway, remember the thing in Skyrim where you have choose the Imperial guard or stormcloak agent to enter helgen with and then proceed to Riverwood with which unlocks you early favoritism between two different families.
How could that be improved?
Say TESVI is two provinces or more. Whatever the intro is like, could it be expanded that whoever you side with ends up being the province you begin in within a starting village? Ofc, all early paths in the main quest eventually link up to the same quest regardless somewhere in the middle of the tree trunk, and depending on choices, repeat that pattern throughout.
Or if it is just one province, perhaps offer two highly-different starter villagers as opposed to the same one regardless.
And then there is always the option to go wherever you like if you don't want to go with any of them and just start heading towards wherever you want to go.
For me, I always like introductions or beginnings that are well-diversified bc it gives me this excitement or incentive to keep exploring this new experience I have just started. Then meet up common ground in the middle, and then branching off again in the ending stages, leading up to the final confrontation which again all paths meet up to. And then finally, based on your actions, branches off again from the final mission to give you varying results of the post-completed world.
In simpler terms, I like the tree method idea for stories. The main mission would always be the same tree, but maybe you'll get to explore other branches of it on the next play-thru that you didn't get to experience on the previous one.

nimble pond
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Hm, I wonder if we could access parallel places, like Lyg, thru mirrors? Walk by one of the mirrors that is connected and happen to catch a glimpse of your alter-ego looking back at you.
Could be a good way for spotting disguised vampires too, no reflection. Which if there are vampires or other beasts, they should look exactly like normal people, until it's too late and they've begun to attack. In Skyrim, you can spot them practically a mile away or wearing the very obvious "vampire armor." In towns at least or on the road.. in dungeons full of them it's alright though.

feral viper
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While Blackmarsh would be my ideal, Hammerfell is a close second, due to its peripheral nature to the ongoing geopolitical struggle between the Empire and Dominon.

I don't want the Dominion to go anywhere. I want it to be around long enough to actually get fleshed out, and stop being the cartoonish villian that it is.

Either make it truely menacing and thoughtful, or make it complex and grey. But as it stands, it's just a Saturday morning cartoon, not an actual antagonist worth considering.

feral viper
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Not that I want that, but I expect the safest route to all problems at this point.

nimble pond
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I love Blackmarsh. The Hist just fascinate me. And Argonians <3.
Even better if it ends up being a title in the future encompassing all of Morrowind along with Blackmarsh, all in lush detail. The two cultures in one game would be my bread and butter.

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I agree, I'm not ready for the Dominion to be the main antagonist just yet. I like them as they have been as a looming threat in the background, and to continue to grow more and more as a threat thru each title, witnessing increasingly dangerous acts by their hand and/or influence each consecutive title.
Perhaps in time, they will achieve great, unheard-of power, even morphing themselves and becoming an army of mini-gods. Would be one hell of a fight.
I may not be alive around the time they become the main antagonist, but I certainly hope they have PC in the afterlife.

nimble pond
nimble pond
# feral viper As for Lyg... At this point, I fully expect it to just be a past Kalpa. The safe...

Perhaps.
Maybe Lyg is somehow growing as our Tamriel continues to exist and eventually it will come to a point where both are trying to exist at the same time as the real version, fighting for their own existence into the future, which of course will really screw time and everything else up in drastic ways, but ultimately one will win to exist (our Tamriel most likely) and continue forth in time, while the other shall perish completely to time, swallowed up.

feral viper
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At such an angle, any 3 dimensional things would have virtually no intersection with eachother, able to entirely exist independently, only existing quasi-interaction at the intersection point for brief instants. Only 4 dimensional objects or entities would be able to perceive both.

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I fully expect it to turn out to just be a past Kalpa, or another big standard alternate timeline like wherever the frak Ithelia ran off to.

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All of that said, I'm still very much against two provinces. The amount of work required to bring two radically different ethnicities and cultures up to what I would consider the bare minimum quality (a quality which, admittedly, Bethesda has failed to meet for the last 20 years) combined with the realities of making a product in a timely manner, simply don't add up.

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It's better to half-ass one culture, than to quarter-ass two at the same time.

nimble pond
nimble pond
# feral viper All of that said, I'm still very much against two provinces. The amount of work ...

You know that gave me an idea. With two provinces, maybe having that much more diversity to play with would inspire the creativity and bring more color and life to it, rather than trying to box the damn thing in so small and tight. A wide array of options to inspire from and not limiting the imagination. Anymore than 2 provinces however and I'd be inclined to agree, too big, at the pace current technology provides. Maybe many years from now games this size and detail will be able to be fully developed in less than a month, lol.