Bringing back TES to Skyrim

[FoolyFooly]

The Elder Scrolls means different things to different people, and my opinions on the series has evolved with the games. If using a carrige is 'cheating' then I don't even know what to say about your ideas.

[Algorath]

See above if you need to reread it. -Al

 

 

My point on redundancy was scaling down of parallel actions (Like Map Markers and Fast Traveling. Alt. Spells and lock picking, etc. etc.) They're easy enough to program, so taking them away has no real benefit beyond reducing redundancy and gameplay streamlining.

 

As for the team size, I'm fairly confident ( My source on Bethsoft 404's now, only when I need it, apparently.) active (as in working on the title at any given time) team sizes never went beyond the numbers given. I will admit that this is slightly construed; Beth had a lot of the TES studio hunkered down in the Morrowind expansions at the time. Total team size for Skyrim is still to be determined, but I expect to see higher numbers.

 

I understand those numbers did not include steam; I understand that historically TES games were predominantly PC; I also understand that the demographics have shifted since Oblivion in favor of the consoles. Of course, without Steams sales data, (please inform me of where to find it if you can.) we're left with conjecture. I doubt Skyrim PC sales match 360's though. My point (with the numbers given.) is the majority of customers will be using a controller; therefore, it's natural to implement your UI on such a control scheme.

 

As for hardware, the 360 is sorely lacking in resources; Bethesda admitted the PC version to be a port, so there's little beyond some texture maps (or heavy overhauls) that can really make a difference.

 

Gameplay changes? I think the majority of the character planning has been condensed down into the perk system, with birthsigns, classes and the like meddled into one interface. A helluva change, but it's easier to make sense of at a glance.

 

At any rate, TES has been less about being P&P D&D (with vidya) and more about it's promise. Expect to see the game streamlined further in the future, and the numbers edged out less. (And by God some better writing... or I'll gut a man.)

 

On a side note, I agree about the challenge, I killed a Dragon, A Giant, and a Mammoth with a Orcish Bow w/ iron arrows at the Giant Camp south of Windhelm @ level 10. Took forever.

 

I snacked on a Giant's Toe afterward. :)

[Imrinfected]

I am intending to add back in spell-making already. I have plenty of experience with scripting in TES games. I made a lot of script-focused mods in Morrowind and Oblivion, moreso than any other mod. I released some of them, too.

 

To my knowledge, in order to add spell-making in proper there will have to be a UI addition in the way of a swf file, which is how all of the menus are handled in this it seems. While I have experience scripting in the TES games, I do not have any experience with flash.

 

I'm more than happy to assist you where scripting is concerned. As far as I'm concerned, it's making my work easier for me, especially because I dislike balancing things. I do have concerns regarding how things are going to be balanced for this, so I ask that you confer with me(and anyone else who assists in this endeavor) with elements of balance.

 

Below is a list of large gameplay-changing things which I intend to mod into Skyrim when the SDK is released. If you're interested in assisting me with these, then we should discuss that, but otherwise let this list serve as a suggestion as to my own dedication and aptitude in modding.

 

 

Missing skills and attributes. I will go about this by whole-sale removing the current system, perks at all, and only using (modified)elements of them behind the scenes where it's convenient to do so. My vision of this is to create a large array of skills -which may require scrapping the current skill system and starting anew-, and by raising specific skills, specific attributes are then raised. The idea behind that is a more automatic version of the Morrowind leveling system, where certain skills were governed by certain attributes, and by increasing those skills there were multipliers to increasing those attributes at level up. I would have the attributes which govern skills raise automatically when those skills are raised. This would negate the need for a level-up menu, or indeed a skill menu, although a menu to view current skill levels would be convenient(Perhaps just one long list of all of the skills and their levels, very minimalistic). I've already gotten the script for it written out in my head, so I really just need the SDK to get that done. I will also return quite old skills, such as climbing, and new skills such as cooking. For this to be effective, I will have to remove leveling from the game as it is currently, assign default perks to the player and all NPCs, and use skill progression to automatically assign certain perks. Some perks will be learnable from NPCs proficient in the governing skill(when the player meets the skill requirement for that perk), either by completing a quest or outright paying them. It may be wise to have all(or most) perks attainable without being trained, but requiring higher skill progression to learn them.

 

Missing spells. There are an enormous number of these. Levitation, slowfall, jump, the list goes on quite extensively. These will be fairly simple to add to the game by way of script effects, such as would be done in Oblivion, but I'm not certain how that will be done in Skyrim. Since we'll be creating the spellmaking system ourselves, compatibility with those new spells will be easy, but there is conflict with the enchanting system because (I assume that) script effects cannot be enchanted onto weapons, although that does still stand to be discovered.

 

Weapon/armor durability. I want to utilize smithing for this. This will likely by the first thing that I do, right alongside of smelting down weapons/armor/equipment for their metals. My vision for this is to use a script to degrade weapons and equipment from their current improvement. IE: "superior" armor will become damaged down to non-improved armor, which will then degrade down into a "reverse" improvement, which lowers the effectiveness of the armor. Stages might include (Damaged, Deformed, Bent, Crude, Broken, Destroyed). The smithing skill will be used to determine how much armor is repaired with one set of the required improvement materials for that armor/weapon, up to the non-improved(and non-damaged) version of the armor, after which the smithing skill is used as it is currently to improve upon it. This system encourages the player to choose their equipment more wisely, to meet with a situation, or perceived difficulty of a journey or quest. Using stronger armor all of the time requires more expensive maintenance, for example, whereas iron armor or leather costs very little. Elements to consider when balancing include rate of armor/weapon degredation, and amount of damage taken required to damage certain equipment. It is possible to use a script to determine the weapon the player is it with, and from there determine how much damage that weapon does, and detect what armor the player is wearing(and possibly where the player is hit), and use that to calculate damage to the armor. A mace to iron armor may damage it considerably more than a sword, whereas the reverse is true for leather armor, and especially true for glass armor. The same script could be used in reverse to calculate weapon damage based on the hit enemy's armor. It should also be possible to determine damage from/with shields(for shield bashing, hitting a blocking enemy's shield, blocking enemy hitting the player's shield). This way equipment could have an aggressive effect on the outcome of a battle, because by using an ebony shield while an enemy is using a glass greatsword, the player could reduce the effectiveness of their weapon very quickly merely by blocking their power attacks. This would require slightly complicated scripts, but nothing beyond what I can do.

 

Enhancement of enchanting. I want to make equipment enchantable with a spell, and not an effect. Similarly, I want to be able to enchant pieces of paper with a spell, and use that paper to cast the spell as I would a scroll, thereby using it up. I did this very often in Morrowind, and it was balanced out by requiring a lot of prep work.

 

There is a laundry list of more minor changes, such as making stealth more difficult(and easier in some ways), by making shadows effect the detection of the Player more, but making the player far easier to detect when not in shadows. Different equipment could modify a detection modifier, where darker and less-shiny equipment lowers the chance of detection, whereas shiny, bright armor highers the rate of detection. I want to add spells and equipment(which is smithable as well as purchasable/findable) that would ease stealth, such as noisemaker arrows, traps, bombs, spells that create distractions(like sound making spell traps, target-spell traps, or using conjuration to create a minion intended specifically for distracting an NPC). All of that should be very easy to add and script given what is already in the game, so while it's important and very gameplay-changing, it's not as complicated and thus deserves less focus.

 

 

It may be wise to approach this by doing and balancing the easier things first(making a spellmaking altar, spell effects, sounds). If you would like my help, perhaps we could try doing some more minor things that are very achievable within a short period of time to ensure at least minimal productiveness, and possibly getting more help for this project.

 

In addition to scripting, I can 3D model and animate. I'm not very good at texturing considering that I'm not very artistic, but I am very good with the more technical aspects of modding. I can give you some examples of things that I've done in the past if you would like. As I said, I have no experience with Flash, and while I could learn I would not consider that a wise choice if we are to keep our goals realistic and achievable, and final result of good quality.

 

If you would like my help, send me a message either though the nexus or Steam, and we will discuss our next course of action, plan the project out, delegate workload, etc. I would prefer Steam for more in-depth collaboration, but either is fine.

Here is my steam account: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004155168

[darkjaffar]

I don't think it's fair to say they didn't spend time on the gameplay in Skyrim. I've played every single TES game since their launch, with exception of Morrowind, which I played later, and Skyrim has, by far, the best balance of realistic combat mechanics and role-playing. Indeed, it does mean losing some of each, but in the end, I think the balance is /fun/ which is an important part of gameplay. Gameplay is not dictated by the complexity of the system being implemented. Daggerfall wasn't better than Morrowind because Daggerfall let you pick a ton of useless abilities that were either redundant or for most purposes, completely unused (Dragonish, you were skill before your time, friend). For discussion purposes: Morrowind was a streamlined casual game designed to appeal to console players.

 

The UI needs tweaking, that I can certainly agree with, but I don't think the tweaks need to be drastic in anyway. The streamlined approach to the inventory is good, but the interface behavior is at times inconsistent or at times doesn't work. Mouse-free navigation should be easily possible, and their current layout allows for it, but it was just implemented poorly and thus doesn't behave the way you would expect. The same UI should also work with a mouse, which again, the UI does support, but does so in a pretty buggy way. For example, if you click outside something that is clickable in a menu, it will leave the menu, for some reason. While speaking, it will select whatever the last selected item was on the list, which often leads to you selecting a discussion option you did not intend to use. They tried to make the same button do too many things at certain points, which do make sense on consoles, but make no sense for PC. It'd be nice to see that decoupled.

 

I hardly think any of these reasons is a call for boycotting DLCs or whatever was being advocated though. They've been dumbing down the series since Morrowind, yet Morrowind is widely considered to be the holy grail of the series, despite the huge streamlining that occurred in that game in comparison to the games preceding it. The only game in the entire series that is more complex than the prequel is Daggerfall.

 

@ Silt Striders - I think they were only nearby - but they were cheats too. That is what the potions of running were for. Ah good times, running faster than a horse...

I'm confused as to what good old times this is in reference to. Every single game in the series has given you quick access to all the cities. Skyrim and Morrowind are the most restrictive, and Morrowind only /slightly/ so.

 

(excluding games like Redguard, since I never played those)

TES1: Arena: All Cities and Dungeons are auto-discovered

TES2: Daggerfall: All Cities and Dungeons are auto-discovered

TES3: Morrowind: Cities and Dungeons not discovered, but many (all?) of the cities are can be accessed by silt striders.

TES4: Oblivion: Cities auto-discovered. Dungeons are not discovered.

TES5: Skyrim: Cities and Dungeons not discovered, but many (all?) of the cities can be accessed by horse carriage.

 

Never in a major TES have you had to really run around and actually discover cities, unless you strictly wanted to. In Arena and Daggerfall's case, doing so means spending 10 real hours going between towns, and spending many real full real days to go from one side of the map to the other, one way. In the Fallout series, you do have to actually run around and find cities, and it's been that way since the original 1 and 2 games, and continued that tradition once Bethsoft took control of the series.

[mlmbug]

 

@ Silt Striders - I think they were only nearby - but they were cheats too. That is what the potions of running were for. Ah good times, running faster than a horse...

 

i can see why you might not like such things as carts and fast travel, but to class them as cheats simply because you don't like them?

personally i think it is more fun walking however i could never class such features as cheats - they just speed up gameplay for those who are time challenged.

 

my other opinion is horses in this game are near useless as they run way too slow, the only use to me is that they have hides for making leather (in other words i can't be bothered buying them)