Things that should exist, but don't.

[ThomasCovenant]

If a society has the ability to make and use full body leather armor, they usually have the ability to dye it multiple colors using natural pigments.

In Skyrim everyone uses candles or lanterns, so solid black clothing would be possible with the use of lampblack.

Certain activities in ES games remain oversimplified, as an example skinning, tanning, and leather making.

1. you would NOT want to have a tanner inside your town.Why not?The smell.

2. the actual process is time consuming.

 

Mining is screwy too.

It takes a lot more ore to make a single ingot of iron than what you could possibly carry in your pocket.

Blacksmiths are probably deaf or very hard of hearing. They also have great upper body strength, and bad eyesight from squinting.

The bad eyesight comes from making chainmail as described to me by a real life BS that attends the SCA here in Colorado.

 

A typical real life vagabond/ex-criminal/"adventurer" would not be spending any time making things except like in the BOOK "The Hunger Games"(as opposed to the crappy movie by the same name) the main character used a bow to hunt animals with, knew about camouflage, sneaking,

and learned to use traps and snares.

 

As I see it, there are no tools to actually do anything except to obtain raw materials.

 

Getting rich quick would require you to steal, but the idea is not to do that. If people from a town knew, somehow, that you had been stealing from their dead, you would have to hide all of the time as they would "hunt you down" for desecrating the resting places of their dead relatives.

*spoiler* that merchant in Riverwood accuses you of "skimming" gold from his ornamental gold claw, when you give it back to him. LOL and then he puts it back in plain sight so that someone else will steal it.

 

So, you want it to be more real?...no one "uses the bathroom". you eat, you drink, you sleep. No one bathes...ewwww...lol kill a mage by making her puke her guts out from your stink.

Once you have had a disease, you should be immune to it. Unless it's like chicken pox, which can come back later in life as "the shingles".

 

Here's an inconvenient reality check. According to history and to that real life blacksmith there is no way that a "lone wanderer" is going to put on full plate armor and then mount a horse. It's not physically possible to do that. That's why they always had btwn 2 to 4 squires and a winch. Trying to walk/run around in full plate mail is even worse. And don't even think about trying to fight effectively while wearing a full helm. If you fall into water more than 6 inches deep, you're dead. The weight of your armor restricts your movement.

 

As some have said. If you want to win a fight, don't get into one.

 

Quick fix potions should be unhealthy. A stamina recharge potion in RL is called...caffeine. Which is an odd substance in that you may FEEL more alert, awake, energized, except that systemically your body is feeling something negative/detrimental.

An instant heal potion is impossible, seems to me to be liquid vitamins. Most of the vitamins that we consume that are not part of food are dumped out through urination.

An instant "spiritual increase"/"spiritual replenisher" (mana/magicka) seems to me to actually be possible in the form of herbs like St. John's Wart which seems to cause some people to FEEL happy. The "potion" is sold at convenience stores under the Brand name Neuro and the beverage name is Bliss.

 

Was just thinking.

[luzburg]

Not bathing is realistic for a kinda medieval setting. Falling dead due to bad hygiene would also be realistic hehe.

[Georgiegril]

Soo...Dragons? Magic? Souls inserted into crystals as a power source? An entire country equaling about 6 square miles?

 

It's like any science fiction or fantasy movie you've ever seen. You can argue ad infinitum about the realistic potential of warp drive (or stargates, or soulgems), or you can just go with it. It's only a RPG.:biggrin:

[StayFrosty05]

Not bathing is realistic for a kinda medieval setting. Falling dead due to bad hygiene would also be realistic hehe.

 

 

Actually a stealthy character would need to bathe rather regularly, though not with soap or other odored cleaning agents....if they don't bathe the smell of old blood and sweat would give them away in a confined space or down wind from their target.

[AnkhAscendant]

I actually want a bathing/cleanliness meter ;) And I assume everyone just goes to the nearest waterway to go to the bathroom. This is why Whiterun has a canal, and the richest people live at the top... s*** flows downhill :D

 

I download a lot of realism/immersion mods. And then I play an unarmored mage, so I ignore the realism to cast fireballs at people.

 

One thing that would be... interesting... is not having healing potions or magic. You'd have to go to a temple and have them stitch you back together and then you'd be out of commission for a couple months and your sword arm would be permanently damaged... Yeah, I can see how that might make for an unpopular game. "Bethesda presents: you, laid up in the hospital ward!"

Edited September 12, 2012 by AnkhAscendant

[Cthuloot]

As said before, you fight dragons, cram souls into gems, shout loud enough to knock people off buildings, and cast magic... While I'm all for realism I don't know why you expect it from Skyrim.

 

Healing and Stamina potions? Magic. Alchemy is explained as a kind of magic and ingredients have magical properties. How many flowers have you eaten that made you INVISIBLE? I'm going to but none. How many mushrooms have you eaten that made you run faster? I'm going to also guess none (Although... Seeing pretty colours is a WHOLE other thing lol)

 

Around this 'time' it was generally thought and taught that bathing was bad for you. Granted this stemmed from Christianity and that the idea of seeing yourself naked would encourage lustful thoughts and pride, but hey, maybe Akatosh has a thing against hygiene as well. My guess about hygiene however would be sales. If they included showering and people relieving themselves they'd have to mention that in the game rating. And oddly enough in America nudity prevents parents from buying their kids games FAR more than violence.

 

I'm not sure what your point about blacksmithing and they should be near blind and deaf was. However for the most part it seems like there isn't a whole lot of older blacksmiths (These things tended to set in over time). Eorlund is pretty old, and I've noticed he seems a bit louder than most. Maybe his hearing is going? If your point was that the PLAYER should be experiencing these things, my question to you is how long would you play a game that progressively and uncontrollably darkened the screen and lowered the volume just because you wanted to forge new armor? Additionally how long would you continue to play after it went black and silent? I'd bet not long.

 

Full plate armor, is heavy yes, however it takes some conditioning. There's a reason so many knights used to wear it. With training and conditioning, it was REALLY nice to have. Until the invention of the crossbow a fully armored knight was damn near invincible. This came from years of training with the armor. And not just the armor, usually he'd wear leather, then chain, then the plate mail. Leather armor alone is still pretty heavy because of how thick it is. It's manageable for people who aren't used to it though. Chain however is usually enough to slow down somebody who's not used to moving in it, even by itself. Plate armor also doesn't just sit loosely on you like a shirt does. It's strapped to you. Which helps isolate what muscles you're going to use to move specific parts, which helps cut down on the overall energy exerted to move in it. However all this knowledge isn't something they expect the average gamer to think about or even know. Generally their thoughts on the matter is that the player will feel awesome donning that 175 pound suit of armor, and not think twice about their wood elf charging full speed into battle, with armor that probably weighs more than him. Also, imagine if they DID make plate armor work as it does in real life. How often would you use a suit of armor that slows you down, makes you unable to use horses, tires you out, and kills you if you step even one foot into a river? I'm going to go ahead and guess you'd NEVER use that armor. Even if it made you only ever take 1 damage from anything.

 

While you make some good points, you have to step back and realize it's a game, and what was and wasn't included or introduced is usually because the devs either didn't think it'd be fun (going blind/deaf from blacksmithing) or they were worried about how it would affect sales (people dropping 'logs' in rivers).

[Moraevik]

Hmm ... Reality strikes again. I love a dose of Reality in my Fantasy, but let me address a few of the points that people have made.

 

1. Squinting does not make your eyesight bad. This is on the order of other old wife's tales like reading in the dark will make your eyes go bad or doing a certain, uh, "thing" will make you go blind.

 

2. Bathing: Regular bathing is something that is common only in cultures like our own. There are even modern, industrial cultures where people do not bathe regularly. Many of those people use various odoriferous substances to attempt to cover up their body odor. In a society where regular bathing is absent, or at least rare, adding your own aroma to that of all the people around you is not likely to give you away if you're sneaking around. The human nose acclimates to constant odors and the brain tunes them out. This may not be so for Khajiit and Argonians. Most scent predators are constantly aware of all the scents around them and do not acclimate to them.

 

4. Crafting: The entire crafting system of Skyrim is abstracted to make it playable. No we don't have the right tools available (although there are hammers and tongs lying about in various places). No, the ore to refined product ratio isn't realistic. Neither are the ores or products. "Ebony" is wood. Malachite is a form of copper ore. Moonstone isn't something you can smelt into ingots. Neither is quicksilver (mercury). Corundum is aluminum oxide, with trace impurities that give it various colors. Transparent red crystals are known as "rubies". Transparent orange crystals are known as "padparadscha". Other transparent versions are called "emeralds". You can't smelt it. It doesn't make "ingots", much less alloy with iron to make steel. We're not talking about Reality here. This is pure fantasy, with no basis in reality at all.

 

5. Bathrooms: Sure people use bathrooms. Have you noticed all those buckets lying around, especially those tucked away in nooks, even with reading material nearby? What do you want out of a Medieval society, anyway? Hot and cold running water and bidet-equipped commodes?

 

Just my two-cents, although I fully agree that a realistic approach to gaming where magic isn't as much of an influence would make games like Skyrim much more interesting. I agree, for instance, that magic shouldn't be able to do instant healing, and that goes for potions, too. It's little tweaks to the fantasy like that which could introduce realism without breaking the whole epic fantasy atmosphere of the game.

 

6. Potions are part of the magic in Skyrim. Don't apply reality to them. There's no reason that quick fix potions should be unhealthy, and instant heal potions have been part of the fantasy genre almost as long as there has been a fantasy genre with potions.

[Cthuloot]

Staring into forge fires all day for years will cause eye sight issues however!

 

And I disagree when people say what magic should and shouldn't be able to do. It's bloody MAGIC, it can do whatever it wants. Now, should instant healing be a little bit less accessible? Maybe. However it doesn't seem fair to limit something that doesn't exist. It's like telling a sci fi genre that a certain kind of alien shouldn't exist. While you can apply some science to it, there are things we don't and probably will never know about. As far as I'm concerned, Restoration and all its spells are perfectly valid.

 

Potions I can argue the same thing with. They're also magic, however I do see the point in making them less of an instant heal. You've got to absorb them right? But hey, maybe that's part of the magic?

[Georgiegril]

Restoration and all its spells are perfectly valid.

-- Colette Marence. LOL.

[Cthuloot]

Restoration and all its spells are perfectly valid.

-- Colette Marence. LOL.

Glad somebody caught it!