If you could go back in time what would you change in Skyrim?

[JesterKing]

1) Better friendship and romance. Many of us will agree romance is almost nonexistent. and I want to earn my friends trust over time. but nope. get done one quest for them and they will follow you into oblivion and back. I'm thinking the sims mixed with mass effect. Perhaps go out on dates. Buy a girly girl a ring to boost the relationship (+2 romance; +1 frienship). Take alea the huntress giant hunting (+1 Romance; +3 friendship) Mod Please...?

 

2) More areas like Blackreach. You know why. It's breathtaking.

 

3)Variety in enemies. If I have to kill one more bandit I'll scream.

 

4)Combat. It's hack and slash Don't get me wrong it's... functional... even mildly fun at times. But it's barebones with just a few different types of items. swords, axes, and maces play the same way. Click to hit. magic is mostly the same too fire, frost, and shock, play similarly. Even going so far as to create the same spell with a different element. (fire rune, frost rune, shock rune.) So there are about 7 different melee weapons (axe, mace, sword, dagger, waraxe, great sword, warhammer, with two varieties one handed and two handed.

 

Perks sorta alleviate this mundane-ness, but then beth went and shot themselves in the foot and created functionally identical perks for two-handed and one-handed. swords have the same perk as great swords! this is not good game design, Beth! Then there is bows for ranged combat. that's it one bow type. bows have different draw speeds I guess. But who amongst us hasn't just used the most powerful bow they have? regardless of draw speeds? The combat is the biggest crime in this game. Imho.

 

So since I'm the director in this hypothetical situation and in keeping on topic I would change the combat in this way. Just to be diffferent I would make the combat point based. you get points for style mainly. You go into a necromancer lair, pickpocket a black soul gem off him, cast soul trap on him, then kill him and trap his soul... in his own soul gem! that would be worth more points than just killing him. Sneak attack with bow. pretty cool. Sneak attack with bow and don't get caught? More points! Murder someone in close proximity to a guard would be worth more points than far away.

 

My two Septims...

[Rossum]

1. Fewer (or no) immortal NPCs.

 

I've run into two unkillable NPCs so far, Ancano and Brynjolf. Ancano was nice because I could use him for backstabbing practice. Brynjolf is just stupidly cheap because he's a common thug who is somehow immortal and immune to damage because he's needed for some quest. I would prefer it if it was possible to just kill him (and/or everyone) and have to deal with failing a lot of quests. It was nice in Fallout: New Vegas because pretty much everyone in that game could be killed except for Yes Man (and he had a good reason for on account of being a robot that could upload into new bodies) and he was only needed for the Wild Card ending (aka the "I just killed all the leaders of the other factions" ending).

 

Haven't gotten very far in Skyrim yet, but I think it would be totally okay to have some kind of Third Option ending that happens if you decide to just kill everyone you meet. Forget saving the world, you just rampage and kill otherwise essential NPCs and watch as the game progresses without them and the world falls apart.

 

 

2. Blacksmiths, Enchanters, Alchemists, and other crafters take jobs from me.

 

I'm the dragonslayer, every second I screw around practicing my backstabbing on Ancano or do some other retarded thing is a second that a flying dragon could decide to show up and start setting some city on fire. Every moment I delay my dragon-slaying quest could cost somebody their life. So why they hell do I have to study alchemy and blacksmithign and stuff to get decent equipment? If I need an awesome dragon slaying sword I should just be able to go to that guy at the Sky forge and ask him to craft me a Deadic sword or Glass Sword or whatever. If he lacks the skills or resources to make it then he can direct me to the guy who has the skills or have me get the resoruces for him. That would be cool and make sense. If I have to pay a load of money to have him make it then I can expect that as well.

 

But the thing is that all the blacksmiths and crafters around here are basically merchants that have some list of stuff they sell and no way to make specific stuff for me. That guy at the Sky Forge who's name I don't give a f*** about? He's apparently the best blacksmith around but I don't care because he basically sells the same stuff everyone else does. The alchemist who's shop I go to to offload things and buy health potions (and nothing else)? She sells a wide variety of potions and poisons that I'll never use and maybe one or two healing potions of varying strength.

 

It would be nice if I could just go to the general store to offload my loot and maybe buy whatever scraps of useful stuff they have, and then stop by the blacksmith/alchemist/enchanter/chef and specifically ask them to make X number of specific items that I want. Tell the alchemist that I will buy as many healing potions as she can possibly mix up, have her mix up a lot of them while I adventure, and the next time I go back she should have two dozen potions for me. If she needs certain ingrediants then she can tell me and I'll go on a quest to pick some up.

 

Sure, if doing it that way costs a load of gold and some hassle then maybe I could do the regular crafting thing and struggle through the work to level up in the skill. But I see no reason why the Dragonborn can't toss a few coins out to make an actual trained blacksmith craft his things if he doesn't want to learn the trade.

 

 

3. Bandit camps get replaced with "Civilian camps" once you clear out the area.

 

Just a minor thing. Some of the bandit camps we see look like the bandits there were trying to do relatively legitimate business things. Like that one operation in the iron mine where a bandit mage has the transmute iron to gold spell and they were hunting mammoths. Or the various fortified keeps. It would be nice if after clearing those out then you could convince some of the cities to retake the fortresses with their own soldiers or have friendly folks move in to occupy the spot. Maybe have Risk-style battle going on between the Imperials, bandits, stormcloaks, and various other factions with dragons being the wild cards that could show up at any time.

 

 

4. Housecarl can help offload all the loot I get.

 

As with the above complaint on NPC crafters, I'm hero, I shouldn't have to bother myself with the details of selling off all my loot (could make for some kind of legitimate storyline/morality thing where you can actually have your servants do various things for you and how you use said servants has consequences). If I could tell my servant "Here's some vendor trash to have, keep it separate from the actual useful stuff I found." and have them run off to sell it while I do more useful things then that would be swell. Even having followers who are specifically good at doing non-combat things would be good.

 

Hire a healer whos primary job is to cast healing spells on me and my allies and has limited combat use otherwise? Great!

Manservant who diligently carries all the garbage I gather up and then sells it for top dollar when we return to town? Awesome!

Buxom wench who looks good in an outfit but really isn't that good in combat? Have her as a companion so you can dress her up and have her hang around various places until you switch her for an actual combat follower!

Hunter who's good at taking out animal enemies and also collects every herb you come across so you don't have to? Genius!

 

Basically, it would be nice if we got something like the Companion Perks from Fallout: New Vegas to help make the companions more unique and useful.