How about all non-magic attacks be linked to stamina? It adds a bit of strategy to combat, because sending a barrage of attacks would quickly deplete your stamina, leaving you vulnerable. It also makes frost magic incredibly viable against physical attackers.
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It also makes Nords a proper choice for a warrior compared to redguards who already had enhanced stamina (In most games that is.) and Orcs who could berserk, because that would allow Nords to resist something that cripples other warriors.
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Isn’t that already the case? In Morrowind it’s hard to actually hit your opponent when you’re low on stamina and in Oblivion and Skyrim you do less damage when out of stamina + you can’t do power attacks.
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I think he was trying to say that all attacks should drain some amount of stamina.
In Skyrim you could fire off normal attacks for years without stamina drain.
For this to work (Dark Souls does this type of thing) It would have to accompany rapid stamina regen.
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Ok, I actually can’t remember. Has been a while and my computer won’t run Skyrim anymore… Why did they take this out, though? Doesn’t make any sense.
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I have no clue.
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So, I thought a bit more about this whole weapons and armor stuff and how the newest stuff is always the best…
Weapons:
What if it doesn’t matter which weapon material you use in terms of damage? Because I’d think there are good weapon smiths and bad weapon smiths. So, for example the good weapon smith only has iron to work with, but he knows what he does and can forge really good iron weapons. The bad weapon smith on the other hand maybe somehow got his hands on a bit of ebony ore, but he really isn’t that good at his work and his weapons turns out rather faulty.
Meaning you could obtain really good and really bad weapons of each material and a perfect iron sword might only be slightly worse than a perfect daedric sword in terms of pure attack power. That would make looting lategame maybe more fun - you never know if you might not find an even better weapon in that dungeon.
In this case I’d put more emphasis on the materials to make weapons better or worse. Iron weapons would be as effective as steel weapons, but they’d get damaged a lot faster (meaning I’d introduce the repairing system again). Glass weapons would be extremely lightweight but also get damaged easily. Elven, ebony and daedric weapons could maybe have increased power if enchanted. Dwemer and Stalhrim weapons on the other hand might be really resilient.
Armor:
Somewhat similar to what I said about weapons and their material - only here the material actually makes an armor basically better or worse. Because while an iron sword might be as effective as a steel sword you can’t deny that leather armor isn’t as effective as plate armor when it comes to protection.
However, there probably still are armorers out there who are better at their job than others, so in order to keep looting exciting I’d transfer those quality grades you could achieve for your armor in Skyrim with your smithing skill to all the loot out there. Thus you could find legendary leather armor parts at the end of a dungeon alongside high-quality elven armor and a rusty iron shield. Yes, come to think of it it might also be nice to have downgrades for the various armor - moldy leather, rusty steel, battered ebony - you should be able to “repair” these, though, I guess.
Also the whole smithing system from Skyrim should maybe be reworked a bit - I admit that I find it pretty awesome to be able to craft my whole equipment myself and make it even better, but once you reach a certain level of equipment this really kills the fun in looting for me because you know beforehand that there’s nothing better to be found. Maybe smithing should be reduced to only a) repairing weapons and armor, b) fixing moldy/rusty/battered armor and c) forging weapons and armor, but not being able to upgrade them - although with a high enough skill you could maybe create high-quality stuff with a certian chance, but never truly legendary stuff.
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Quality is definitely the proper way to handle weapon damage. That way, the various types of weapon materials would all be viable and wouldn’t act like a climbing ladder. Instead, they all have higher level variants. This allows for each ore type to have a specific battle effect. Steel might be great for standard combat, but lack special features, Iron would be less effective at damaging than other weapons, but it would inflict rust based diseases that periodically damage enemies, Ebony might ignore armor rating spells like stome flesh and armor enchantments on opponents, and Daedric would be more effective for dismemberment.
These are just examples of course.
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Two more things I’d like to see reintroduced:
Magic staffs are actual melee weapons:
In Oblivion and Skyrim you could only cast spells with your staffs, but otherwise they were pretty useless. I feel like it should be possible to actually fight and block with them. Sure, they probably would be less effective than pretty much every other weapon, but not to be forced to switch weapons because you can fight off some weaker enemies with your staff still would be nice. Also this could mean that if you want to play a proper wizard you don’t need to carry that big sword around as a reserve for when your magicka is drained. Come to think of it this might actually mean that you’d be using staffs at all beyond the random one you pick up in a dungeon and discard later when it’s empty.
Active enchantments on rings and amulets:
Back in Morrowind most enchanted items had enchantments that required you to activate them. Since your euquipment was made out of like 20 items, though, you hardly ever did that unless you needed very certain effects or wanted to defeat a particularly strong enemy. Since Oblivion enchantments are always passive and work permenantly on armor. For teh most part I definitely appreciate that. However, I feel like rings and amulets that you have to actively activate should be reintroduced. Thus you could have rings and amulets that can heal you or shoot fireballs at your enemies again. And rings and amulets wouldn’t take up as much carry weight as a staff - on the other hand, though, they’d run out of power far more quickly.
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I’d like more useful and varied spells.
Most of the spells in skyrim are merely upgrades of spells you find early in the game. The reason for this was that spells never gain power unless you take a specific perk or wear a mask from the DLC so you had to upgrade just to stay relevant.
Instead of having many spells that are effectively duplicates we should have more variety. For instance there could be spells that project a continuous beam of energy at low DPS but potentially devastating effects if you can keep the beam on target versus projectile spells that do a larger amount of damage right away but cost more mana. This would prevent the issue in Skyrim that I’m sure many people faced where they were upgrading magicka at level up but it never helped much because they were always upgrading to higher cost spells. It would also make Flames relevant. I always disliked that Flames (and it’s counterparts for other elements) were unique in the way they fired but you couldn’t reasonably use them because they were so wimpy against enemies above level 5 or so.
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Yeah, more spells would be great again, too. Morrowind and even Oblivion had a ton more spells than Skyrim. I’d especially like to again get levitation, spells to unlock things and more diverse conjuration spells - I mean in Skyrim you can basically only reanimate corpses or summon Atronachs with actual spells (as far as I remember). I’m missing the Skamps, Clannfears and Daedroth.
Also it would be great to be actually able to play as a mage without being forced to use destruction magic. I installed a mod back when I could still play Skyrim that added a ton of new spells, amongst them spells that do damage of every magic school - that was really nice. The mod also included spells with which you could raise a wall in front of you, something with which you could create drop zones in which you don’t take fall damage, a restoration spell that upon touch instantly killed an enemy if it was below 25% health (made my life so much easier with the Dragon Combat Overhaul mod installed…) and other stuff like this.
So yeah, instead of simple variations of the same handful of spells it would be great to have actual diversity. Also it would be nice if you could create your own spells again.
I also installed a mod (Simple Magic Overhaul by ApolloDown - he took it down, though) that changed how magic worked, but never could try it out since my computer began having problems with running Skyrim back then already…
From the mod’s description these seem to be the basic contents:
a) Depending on your race you start with 0 to -100 Magicka. Not everyone can be a mage. Probably not something I’d like to see in a vanilla version, but for modded playthroughs that’s at least interesting. By reaching level 65 in a spell school you get permanent +50 magicka, though.
b) Something along the way of the more magicka a spell uses up the more powerful it is. If you drain your whole magicka with a single spell you do like 3 times the damage the spell would usually do
c) Still you have to be careful, as your magicka stops regenerating if low enough + if you run out of magicka through a spell you apparently can experience knockback that can actually kill you
d) Low stamina reduces the power of your spells by up to 50%
e) In “desperate” situations you have a chance of randomly firing off a vanilla spell of any level
f) Attack power of your spells increases with the level you have in that school. Apparently combined with b) your spells can thus reach up to 9 times their vanilla power
g) Wards, if timed correctly, can reflect spells - making them actually useful
h) You can deal damage with telekinesis by throwing stuff at people.
I don’t know what you think about this, but I think this sounds awesome.
So, thought a bit more about the weapon types/classes I’d ideally want to see in an Elder Scrolls VI game:
1) Short weapons:
Knives, daggers, tantos, wakizashis, shortswords.
Should be pretty effective when used to stab and also be especially effective while sneaking. Shouldn’t be very useful against armored foes except if used to stab.
2) Swords:
Cutlasses, arming swords, rapiers, longswords, katanas, greatswords.
Most noticeably here I’d return to divide weapons by what kind of weapons they are, not by if they’re onehanded or twohanded - after all using a greatsword is more alike to wielding a longsword than wielding a warhammer.
Also you should be able to choose if you want to use your katana or longsword onehanded or twohanded - onehanded your attacks would be slower and weaker, but you could use a shield or magic with the off hand. Twohanded your attacks would be faster and stronger and parries with the weapon more effective.
Katanas would be most effective against unarmored or lightly armored foes, as would be rapiers. While you’d slash with katanas, you’d stab with rapiers for the most damage.
Cutlasses are slightly better against unarmored foes whereas arming swords are a bit more effective against armored foes.
Longswords have a higher reach and higher damage output than arming swords and greatswords even more so.
3) Axes and (most) blunt weapons:
Onehanded axes, twohanded axes, maces/clubs, warhammers (onehanded and twohanded)
I’d combine these two since from what I’ve seen there doesn’t seem to be a big difference in how you use them.
All of these weapons do most damage by swinging them, whereas they’re generally rather useless for stabbing. Axes include throwing axes which you can also use in close combat. For throwing them to the most effect you need a different skill (6)), though.
All of these are also particularly effective against armor compared to other weapontypes and the twohanded variants do very high damage.
Downsides are that these weapons are heavy, taking up a big part of your carry weight, use up stamina a lot faster than most other weapons and while they’re not much slower than, say, swords when you simply swing them, it does take a great deal more time to recover from when you land a hit. Also blocking with these weapons isn’t very efficient (after all your fingers aren’t protected).
4) Spears, polearms and battle staffs:
Spears, poleaxes, halberds, battle staffs
All of these have a decent to very high reach compared to other melee weapons and have to be wielded twohanded. Spears are only good for stabbing and it’s pretty slow and ineffective to do aything different with them. Halberds are much the same, but can do high damage with swings, too - still you’re incredibly slow to recover from such swings. These two weapons have the highest reach of all melee weapons. Especially halberds are pretty heavy, though. Spears include throwing spears that can also be used in melee combat. Your skill in throwing them depends on a different skill (6)), though.
Poleaxes only have medium reach but are good in pretty much every aspect against all kinds of foes. While tehy don’t reach the power of a twohanded axe or warhammer, they are a little lighter and faster.
Battle staffs don’t do much damage, but since they’d be enchanted most of the time their use as a melee weapon only is a secondary thing anyways.
5) Bows and stuff:
Bows, crossbows, maybe blowguns?
Bows are the quickest to reload, but are not that effective against heavy armor. Crossbows do the most damage and aren’t bothered by armor (maybe ignore even part of it? - wasn’t that already teh case in Skyrim?). Blowguns do nearly no damage and are closeto useless against completely armored up foes, but they’re stealthy and their darts can be poisoned to the most effect out of all weapons (?). Maybe there could also be special alchemical/magical projectiles that explode or something.
And you should be able to use arrows as stabbing weapons (short weapons?) if you need to, although they’re really not very effective and break easily.
6) Other ranged weapons:
Throwing knives, throwing darts, shurikens, throwing axes, throwing spears.
You should be able to use all of these in close combat, too - to various degrees of effectiveness. Knives, darts and shurikens are really only viable against unarmored foes - they’re mostly for fun, anyway, but I guess if poisoned or enchanted they might actually be useful. Throwing axes and throwing spears do quite a lot of damage if they hit, definitely being able to penetrate armor that isn’t plate as well as lighter shields. If blocked by a shield that isn’t “good enough” they have a chance of getting stuck in it, encumbering the opponent, making his shield blocks slower and cost him more stamina when blocking and moving.
Did I forget anything?
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Curved swords.
Seriously keep the scimitars, those are one of my favorite parts of the redguard.
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They have a pretty interesting arabic/atlantis/pirate style going that is only ever explore in TES: redguard and ESO.
I’d love the next game to have objects that aren’t just focused on the main setting but that represent the many cultures of tamriel.
Like you could have a merchant from a province across the continent who markets himself as a peddler of rare goods Or maybe a gang of bandits from another province that mainly use gear from their homeland.
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That would be pretty nifty. I just don’t see the next Elder Scrolls game existing being able to do that if they keep doing this thing where they focus on specific regions of Tamriel.
That makes me wonder, though: where should the next setting of The Elder Scrolls games be set in? Personally I’d love to see a combination of High Rock and Hammerfell. They feel like a really good setting to explore for TES, especially since there’s an incredibly diverse amount of races in those parts. (High Rock, for instance, shares Orcs and Bretons.)
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That was the loose area of daggerfall, though it’d be awesome to see in a modern singleplayer TES.
ESO let’s you explore those areas but it takes place 900 years before Skyrim so things have drastically changed. (notably Orsinium has risen and been conquered by bretons/redguards some 3-4 times during that)
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Dude that would be sick. The next game could be about Orsinium having dominion over those two lands and you could have adventures there while dealing with the Bretons and Redguards disputing.
That’s a rough idea, of course, but I could totally see that happening.
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A plot of rebuilding Orsinium after being conquered yet again was recently done in ESO for a DLC.
I doubt they’d do a similar move quite so soon.
Ah man. That’s lame…
Where else, then? I guess the Black Marsh and Elsewyre are possibilities, but I feel they wouldn’t nearly be diverse enough for different cultures.
They were never possibilities.
Bethesda went out of their way to say they’d make poor games by their own right.
If we discount stuff that’s been done before, High rock on it’s own, Hammerfell on it’s own, Summerset Isles, and Valenwood are possibilities.
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High Rock and Hammerfell on their own would be nice, but I would still like a combo.
Summerset should definitely include a Thalmor-driven plot.
Not sure about Valenwood, but that might work too.
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