Mod Idea: Clever Wanted System

[gabrielrock19]

Let's talk about GTA for a second (just kidding. It's just a brief example). In games where the main theme is playing as a criminal, the police stars increase until they reach five. Each level has stronger and stronger police officers, making SWAT, FBI, helicopters and even tanks appear.

I just realized Skyrim could use this system in its own way.

Bethesda made the hold guards follow the player's level up to level 50, but that's a cheap solution. Level 50 in the vanilla game is the absolute pinnacle if you don't mod it: dragon priests, dragr deathlords and other legendary enemies are stuck at this level. Hold Guards don't have their abilities, but the game makes them strong anyway. They can take down dragons and master vampires in groups. The devs made them that way to "supposedly" keep the challenge of committing a crime alive, which means they aimed for a consistent wanted system but failed miserably. Having guards be that powerful just for that reason is a cheap implementation to the issue and just shatters immersion.

Instead, the wanted system could use a simple solution. Let's say our hypothetical mod tracks the fact the player killed all the regular hold guards in town which are all locked at a maximum level of 25 - half their intended cap. The player's bounty is now enormous, and the Jarl will request reinforcements. In a matter of hours, 4 level 50 guards arrive to take the player down. If they are killed, the Jarl requests assistance from Ulfric himself or the Empire. Two level 75 legates arrive, with several combat perks - being worth the collective power of an entire battalion. Keep in mind this system of few and powerful enemies is, besides being interesting, thought to be useful since the game has difficulty in handling multiple actors fighting in the same space. After the player kills them, the last wanted level involves fighting an Empire or Stormcloack General fully geared with top armor at level 85+ with more health and perks than their previous legates. This means you have to fight an Ebony Warrior type of enemy. If you kill him, the game either resets your bounty to zero because even the army couldn't take you down or the Jarl himself approaches you with a final offer of clearing your bounty for half the price. If you refuse, another general comes in... and so on and so forth.

This is just an example of the concept I had in mind. The wanted levels could be more and more diverse, but I'm sure you all get the idea by now.

Edited October 6 by gabrielrock19

[Karna5]

That sounds like a lot of fun and like something which would work great with a prison alternative mod. I regularly build up a bounty of thousands and then work it off with the prison alternative (though often I die to that as well as sometimes the prison alternative gets you killed in elaborate ways).

What I like about your idea is you give a way to beat the bounty before you go to jail. Then, if you fail to beat your bosses, you go to jail and cross your fingers that you don't get eaten by vampire cannibals or hung on the gallows or impaled or the like.