The Elder Scrolls

[Avocado]

I bought Skyrim when it was $5 on Steam sometime at the end of 2013. I always assumed TES was just a typical 'knights and dragons' fantasy thing and I've never really been into that kind of stuff, so I never really cared enough to try it, but I'd just gotten a new gaming computer and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

A little over a year later I have over a hundred hours on Skyrim and now I've started on Morrowind. It's actually a little hard to go back to Skyrim because now I've realized how generic it is compared to Morrowind's setting. It was actually Dragonborn that encouraged me to play Morrowind- maybe I just like giant mushrooms, I dunno. I bought Oblivion during the Christmas sale but I haven't touched it yet. The Daedra are probably my favorite part of the lore and I really want to play the Shivering Isles DLC, but the setting is apparently the most generic 'high fantasy' of all the games and that puts me off a bit. I'll play it when I'm tired of Morrowind and Skyrim I guess.

I'm just now getting deep into the lore and all the Kirkbride stuff. I'm loving it so far though, even though I'm pretty late to the party.

 

[Linako 2.0]

I'll play it when I'm tired of Morrowind

So.... never?

 

[c-no]

8Chan's /V/ had this post on The Elder Scrolls. To note what it is, OP says how one could fix Elder Scrolls. Does anyone think the series could use some recommendations or does anyone think it's fine as it is? Personally, one wouldn't mind it being on a new engine though some of OP's suggestions are rather stupid like taking out first person and making the story better (that I say because one should look at the lore since that does help with the story such as with Morrowind).

 

[Linako 2.0]

I made someone mad.
all I did was explain what Mundus is.

Spoiler: more youtube comments

 

[John Titor]

8Chan's /V/ had this post on The Elder Scrolls. To note what it is, OP says how one could fix Elder Scrolls. Does anyone think the series could use some recommendations or does anyone think it's fine as it is? Personally, one wouldn't mind it being on a new engine though some of OP's suggestions are rather stupid like taking out first person and making the story better (that I say because one should look at the lore since that does help with the story such as with Morrowind).

I'd say Bethesda should take their time instead of rushing. It's obvious the 11/11/11 deadline forced them to rush Skyrim.

 

[c-no]

I'd say Bethesda should take their time instead of rushing. It's obvious the 11/11/11 deadline forced them to rush Skyrim.

Taking their time would make the product better as in less bugs and such. I'd myself would say they should make the cities be open like in Morrowind and Daggerfall. They could also try to make some sort of difference with fast travel. Maybe tie it in with certain quest that have deadline's, be it a side-quest or a radiant quest (Closest game to that was Daggerfall since it gave you fast travel in the form of what you'd expect in Oblivion and through a mark and recall spell). It would also be nice for them to make armor separate like in the pre-Oblivion games, even if said armor clashes with each other (Imagine wearing glass armor and Daedric armor together while wearing a CWC clown shirt beneath the cuirass).

 

[Watcher]

Taking their time would make the product better as in less bugs and such. I'd myself would say they should make the cities be open like in Morrowind and Daggerfall.

There are modifications that make Skyrim and Oblivion's cities actually in the world space. And it kills your FPS pretty quickly unless you have a really powerful CPU.

I mean it's still not an excuse but I understand why Bethesda closed the cities off. Mostly to build their games for consoles. By comparison Morrowind was ported to consoles after the fact. And the way it dealt with distant areas was it used notorious amounts of fog where the landscape would just warp into existence.

Meanwhile Oblivion and Skyrim were actually capable of rendering distant lands due in large part to closing off cities. It didn't help that they added radiant AI which would also calculate where NPCs were going in the world and their day to day habits. Which was something Morrowind lacked, and the staticness of it's world was something journalists at the time criticized.

They could also try to make some sort of difference with fast travel.

Actually in Skyrim you can hire a carriage that will warp you to any of the hold capitals in the world. Not all of them have carriages mind you but it's easily solvable with a mod. So there are alternatives to fast travel you can take advantage of. There are also mods that allow you to ride around in a ship but it has less use than in Morrowind due to Skyrim being mostly land-locked with just a narrow coastline.

Maybe tie it in with certain quest that have deadline's, be it a side-quest or a radiant quest (Closest game to that was Daggerfall since it gave you fast travel in the form of what you'd expect in Oblivion and through a mark and recall spell).

I personally don't want time based quests. I'd prefer it if they instead focused on allowing quests to have multiple failure states.

It would also be nice for them to make armor separate like in the pre-Oblivion games, even if said armor clashes with each other (Imagine wearing glass armor and Daedric armor together while wearing a CWC clown shirt beneath the cuirass)

This was actually something the devs addressed before Skyrim came out. They mentioned they reduced the amount of removable parts to armor inorder to not only save on FPS but to also increase the amount of detail in their particular armor they used. So player characters would wear particular "outfits" rather than mixing and matching random parts.

And I can certainly understand the appeal of doing it. I mean there was a great deal of good armor sets in Fallout 3/NV that probably wouldn't have worked as separate parts. Mind you tailor made did it really well but that had way more functionality and features than I'd expect Bethesda would be willing to implement in their games.

 

[Burned Man]

Personally I like closed off cities, to me it makes things safe. I remember one time I left my House in Riften through the backdoor and on that porch were 4 dead frostbite spiders pressed up against the door. I don't know what happened but it worried me. I like that I don't need to worry about random accidents happening killing off people in a city. Events aren't usually so random and settlement seem safe but I get a little paranoid at times.
I would like for them to reduce the amount of random favor quests in the game. Every character needs the great and all powerful Dovahkin, Legate, Thane, Vampire, Listener, Harbinger to deliver a some sweetrolls to their grandmother down the street. Yeah I'll do that right after I help those guys at the market fight the 3rd dragon to land in the town center today.

I think armor would be interesting if you got a few base pieces like torso, legs, gloves, helmet, and boots and were able to add features and customize them. Like a helmet you could add a nose guard or horns and for the torso different pauldrons or fur trim. They could make each armor piece have 2 or 3 pre defined options to keep it simple. I wouldn't mind a way to change the appearance of a piece of armor into something else. I always have plans for how I want my characters to look and Daedric and glass armors never fit into those plans.

 

[exball]

 

[Watcher]

 

[c-no]

Just leaving a couple things to post, both from 8Chan.

 

[Uzumaki]

I bought Oblivion during the Christmas sale but I haven't touched it yet. The Daedra are probably my favorite part of the lore and I really want to play the Shivering Isles DLC, but the setting is apparently the most generic 'high fantasy' of all the games and that puts me off a bit. I'll play it when I'm tired of Morrowind and Skyrim I guess.

Oblivion's world is generic as fuck, and if that's all you care about you'll hate it, but it has some great really interesting quests. The quests are a lot more fun and diverse than Skyrim. If you can get over the fact that it takes place in the same 5 acres of British farmland copy/pasted a million times I think you'll like it.

Oh, also, the leveling system is the most broken leveling system ever invented and you basically have to spend the entire game fighting with it. The leveling system is like GLaDOS; it wants you to think it's your friend, but it's really just there to screw you. Basically every time you level the enemies get stronger but, if you spent your time playing the game instead of carefully crafting your every action so that you gain specific skill ups and level in just such a way, you will not gain strength at pace with them. Basically, in Oblivion, as you level up you get weaker and weaker in comparison to the things you fight unless you spend the entire game focusing on how you level to the determent of fun.

You have to exploit the leveling system to play the game, because it is the true antagonist of Oblivion. A good tip would be to tag skills you plan to never use as your major skills. That will at least allow you to decide when to level. One of the strongest builds in Oblivion is to be level 1 for the whole game (no joke).

It really does have good quests, though.

 

[exball]

Oh, also, the leveling system is the most broken leveling system ever invented and you basically have to spend the entire game fighting with it. The leveling system is like GLaDOS; it wants you to think it's your friend, but it's really just there to screw you. Basically every time you level the enemies get stronger but, if you spent your time playing the game instead of carefully crafting your every action so that you gain specific skill ups and level in just such a way, you will not gain strength at pace with them. Basically, in Oblivion, as you level up you get weaker and weaker in comparison to the things you fight unless you spend the entire game focusing on how you level to the determent of fun.

Oscuro's is your friend.

 

[Watcher]

Oblivion's world is generic as fuck, and if that's all you care about you'll hate it, but it has some great really interesting quests. The quests are a lot more fun and diverse than Skyrim. If you can get over the fact that it takes place in the same 5 acres of British farmland copy/pasted a million times I think you'll like it.

Something I was reading about with Oblivion was it's initial concept was actually very interesting. It focused a great deal more on Imperial politics. Like Martin Septim was more or less only in the story as a puppet emperor the player could put into office. And you'd be able to become a duke/duchess and rule over a particular part of Cyrodiil. Then they had to reign in the scope of the game a great deal and rewrote the plot to be more about the Oblivion invasion and cut out all of the politics. I also read that cutting all of that out was Todd Howard's biggest regret with Oblivion.

At least based on stuff I've read on Nexus and Bethesda's forum.

Oh, also, the leveling system is the most broken leveling system ever invented and you basically have to spend the entire game fighting with it. The leveling system is like GLaDOS; it wants you to think it's your friend, but it's really just there to screw you. Basically every time you level the enemies get stronger but, if you spent your time playing the game instead of carefully crafting your every action so that you gain specific skill ups and level in just such a way, you will not gain strength at pace with them. Basically, in Oblivion, as you level up you get weaker and weaker in comparison to the things you fight unless you spend the entire game focusing on how you level to the determent of fun.

You have to exploit the leveling system to play the game, because it is the true antagonist of Oblivion. A good tip would be to tag skills you plan to never use as your major skills. That will at least allow you to decide when to level. One of the strongest builds in Oblivion is to be level 1 for the whole game (no joke).

It really does have good quests, though.

Oscuro's is your friend.

I have to stress Exball's recommendation here. Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul addresses a great deal of the problems that existed in Oblivion's leveling system, and makes the game feel like an actual RPG for once.

There's also the mod OCO or Oblivion Character Overhaul that replaces all of the NPC meshes to much better ones.

As someone who hated Oblivion for many years both of those mods made me enjoy the game for once.

 

[Linako 2.0]

Something I was reading about with Oblivion was it's initial concept was actually very interesting. It focused a great deal more on Imperial politics. Like Martin Septim was more or less only in the story as a puppet emperor the player could put into office. And you'd be able to become a duke/duchess and rule over a particular part of Cyrodiil. Then they had to reign in the scope of the game a great deal and rewrote the plot to be more about the Oblivion invasion and cut out all of the politics. I also read that cutting all of that out was Todd Howard's biggest regret with Oblivion.

If I recall, they kept Cyrodiil as High Rock 2.0 because love for the LOTR movie was still going strong and they cut those other stuff not only for time constraints, but to make it playable on consoles.

 

[c-no]

If I recall, they kept Cyrodiil as High Rock 2.0 because love for the LOTR movie was still going strong and they cut those other stuff not only for time constraints, but to make it playable on consoles.

From what I remembered on Kirkbride's tumblr, the LOTR craze did have an effect. As Cuddlebug mentioned, Martin was a puppet emperor you'd put in, saying "Martin was suppose to be this teach as you go retard" that you'd try to make as emperor. To see that sort of thing would really be interesting. It could mesh well with the Oblivion crisis plot they had in that you'd have to get someone to be the emperor before Dagon comes in to rule Tamriel but I could be wrong.

 

[Watcher]

If I recall, they kept Cyrodiil as High Rock 2.0 because love for the LOTR movie was still going strong and they cut those other stuff not only for time constraints, but to make it playable on consoles.

Yeah post Morrowind Bethesda has taken from popular culture a great deal. When Skyrim was first being created it was originally spawned as part of Bethesda being hired to make a Game of Thrones game. And you can see a lot of Game of Thrones influence on Skyrim especially in terms of it's aesthetic.

 

[Linako 2.0]

I bet Bethesda won't make anotther TES game unless another fantasy series becomes popular.
I really don't know if I should blame Todd or Bethesda's marketing team.

 

[c-no]

I bet Bethesda won't make anotther TES game unless another fantasy series becomes popular.
I really don't know if I should blame Todd or Bethesda's marketing team.

One could blame Todd since he has a high position in making these games. By that, I mean he'd probably say what the game should have. Marketing team can also take the blame since they would say the game could cash in on whatever fantasy series is popular.

 

[Linako 2.0]

The game that no one asked for is going subscription free.
give it a few more months and it will go f2p

I forgot this game took place in Tamriel until I saw a glimpse of the golden tower in the background.
also I can't tell if that lich lord is an Altmer or Ayleid.