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If you could help design TES6; what would you do?

Iznaliu

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Apr 28, 2016
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Let's imagine you were hired by Bethesda as a consultant to help work on the mechanics of TES6 because "some external inspiration is needed" (i.e. they are in development hell) You cannot be fired short of killing Todd Howard, and your suggestions will be given weight but are still subject to revision. What would you do?
 
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Drog Black Tooth

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Feb 20, 2008
Messages
2,636
Make it more like Dark Souls, I guess.

Been playing Skyrim a couple of months back, and it's just so underwhelming. You're excited as you start the game, then do a bunch of quests, go thru a dozen of dungeons and then... you just lose all interest, because no matter where you go it's all the same. Just the same few dungeon tilesets with the same few set pieces and the same enemies rehashed over and over and over again. Pick a direction at random, and it's the same landscape wherever you go and the same retarded NPC's sending you on bullshit errands with no interesting backstory.

So yeah, a smaller scope with more focus would help. And since TES is no longer relying on dice rolls and there's very little stats now, might as well just make it a full blown hack'n'slash, like Dark Souls, Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, Devil May Cry, etc. Awesome combat system, memorable locations, cool characters that have something interesting to say. TES sadly never had any of this. The games've always been a shitty singleplayer MMO sandbox.
 
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CptMace

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Die große Nation
I'd keep on with the popamole bland and stupid formula. It's easy sheckels and doesn't hurt the head too much.

I'd get rid of the level-up process, it makes no sense anymore since the player will either complete 100% like the retard he probably is (and therefore unlock every single skill anyway) or quit the game after 15hours with a bad taste in the mouth, still convinced of the unquestionable groundbreaking nature of the game - although he got bored to death himself - because of mimetism and whatnot.

I would also import the voiced protagonist from Fallout 4 (or - more properly - from the cinematic experience a la MGS and such that I really want my shit game to be), probably hire a big name to make him act lines like "Do you know where I can find brother PapaBless ? It's about the prophecy of the naked boob" so the impressionable fanbase would liquefy at the glance of what he'd consider gold story-telling - Kids it's Mark Hamill !

I would not miss the opportunity to carry on Bethesda's legacy by designing a main quest that doesn't fit the open world aspect of the game at all. I'd make sure this main adventure is actually, for the most part, a succession of nonsensical fetch quests. I would make it impossible to disable the quest compass, but that's only because I can't stand these fuckers who claim you can play without it. FUCK.

I would put the emphasis on the fact that the world is open and people can do stuff in any order. It's been around for 20 years but somehow, it still does wonders on the marketing front. I won't complain though, these fuckers make me rich.

I would probably blur everyone's perception of my company's strategy as well by reintroducing a PC-friendly inventory and UI. The low-iq pc folks would applause at this welcome return to source as I would simply be pragmatic towards the fact that "PC is dying" has been a cool and fun saying for the last 20 years but it's eventually time to realise it's bullshit, and taking care of the pc crowd actually benefits the sales and reviews. Although, it's - like - super stupidly easy to make a specific UI and inventory for the computer, like really how lazy have we been.

All in all, I would most probably revolutionize the genre. Or make sure the press keeps saying so. I don't even have to pay any of these fucktards, just invite them to one of these good old vg journalist handjob fest - hookers provided, have a taste of TES6, be sure to spread the word !
 
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undecaf

Arcane
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3,517
Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
Like Morrowind, but more responsive and polished (hit/miss animations for example and possibly a target lock to mitigate the doublegated - player&character skill - feel of combat success). With a main quest that's not about saving the world from an ancient evil, but about a more personal goal to the character.

I'd be fine with just that.
 
Joined
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Hi, Todd. I'd probably do away with the character creation and have you play as a beautiful Imperial lady (actually half-daedra half-aedra, child of Dibella and Molag Ball Z but she's the one who raped him because she's too kinky to rape) voiced by Grey DeLisle (doing her Vicky voice from Fairly Oddparents) to immerse the player more in the world. That, and a point-buy system so you don't have to massacre fauna with fireballs while invisible bunnyhopping to train anymore.
 

Bumvelcrow

Somewhat interesting
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Dumbfuck
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Codex 2013 Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Strap Yourselves In
Let's imagine you were hired by Bethesda as a consultant to help work on the mechanics of TES6 because "some external inspiration is needed" (i.e. they are in development hell) You cannot be fired short of killing Todd Howard, and your suggestions will be given weight but are still subject to revision. What would you do?

Kill Todd Howard and collect severance pay and Codexian adulation. Problem solved. :obviously:

Or, if we have to do it the legal way, Mom, it would be Daggerfall skills, Morrowind exploration and lore (sorry for the use of that word), and Skyrim++ graphics. Also, it would be set in northern Black Marsh and deal with a war between the lizards and the Dark Elves thanks to Cyrodiil taking its eye of the ball due to the Skyrim shenanigans. Black slavers - should get SJW frothing!

:smug:
 

555

Educated
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Aug 19, 2017
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Ankara
Add more reactivity to the world and make it small but focused instead of big and empty one. Also drop the "player should see all content in first playthrough" concept and make some content lock others to make playthroughs more unique. Also no paid mods
 
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Bumvelcrow

Somewhat interesting
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Codex 2013 Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Strap Yourselves In
Also, fuck those tiny kitchen sink sized provinces. Fully procedurally generated terrain (hire No Man's Sky losers to do that) with hand-placing around the cities. Proper sized cities. Gothic-like city business. Hand-made quests and quest-lines. None of this audience-pleasing assassinate the emperor delusion. Decent combat with a return to Morrowind's to-hit dice rolling. The plot is usually irrelevant in Elder Scrolls games (Morrowind excepting) but something with a nice conclusion would be good. Side with the Dark Elves and bad things happen. Side with the lizards and different bad things happen. No happy endings!
 

Falksi

Arcane
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Feb 14, 2017
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Nottingham
I'd remind them that exploring isn't fun when everything you search for is already on your compass/map, and everything you find is generic worthless shit anyway.

I'm still amazed at what they did with the compass. Not for one, but TWO games. Oblivion? Fair enough try it, see how it goes. But to keep it for Skyrim? Ye gads, they must simply be the thickest, dumbest mother fuckers to ever stain our planet.
 

Ranarama

Learned
Joined
Dec 7, 2016
Messages
604
Why set it in a single province? If the map must be province sized it would be more interesting to deal with a border between two of them. I'm also sick of Skyrim pretending a war was going on in the background when at best you see a skirmish or two. If you can't handle the unit count then don't fucking pretend. Have a guerilla war if you must. That's probably manageable. Either against thalmor, argonians, or some revisiting of breton v. orcs in high rock.

Also do something definitive to ensure that shitty MMO is non-canon.

More choices or factions that are mutually exclusive, which gives you the freedom to kill quest-giving NPCs.

Stop voicing 100% of dialogue. It's stupid and limits the amount of NPCs you can have. Nobody has been fooled by the small number of voice actors you can hire.

Include a fucking counter for lines of random dialogue. You can spare the fucking byte of memory to remember how long it has been since I heard about a guard being shot in the knee or how that retard works for belethor. Don't have merchants require a fucking loading screen to access. Have small buildings and any non-dungeon building be on the same map. That goes for cities too. Do this and suddenly sneaking and climbing up over the walls becomes possible.

Stop hard coding quest triggers. Have simple conditions on them. The thieves guild quest in Skyrim and the civil wars quests are notorious for breaking down. You *can* have multiple possible triggers for a quest to start, like back-ups for dead quest NPCs. You know what was stopping you from doing that? Having to voice another NPC giving all the dialogue, but I've already told you not to do that. So just Ctrl-C Ctrl-V the little bit of dialogue, alter it a little and you're done.

Then we can go crazy. Have some quests react to the current state of the world. Dark brotherhood quests where you have to track down your target (guess what: no quest markers). Thief quests where you have to find out who has the items you need to steal, quests that refer (under the hood) to just 'a senior NPC of Y faction', so if someone dies it doesn't fucking matter, you can find a replacement.

More encounters where whoever you've ticked off sends bad guys at you. (And not just sticking random notes that say kill him for stealing from me, if I've ticked off a wizard he'd send elementals, or dremora, not some shitty bandits.)

Zero crafting. Zero smithing. Put the crafting and enchanting interfaces in a shop where I can custom order items like worked fantastically back in Morrowind. Grinding that shit is boring, and you don't have enough money sinks in your games anyway. Then you can cut off certain enchants to NPCs for certain factions. Make disguises work (branch of stealth skill maybe) like in fallout.
 

Mustawd

Guest
-Make it isometric or First Person View like a blobber
-Turn-based combat
-Make voice acting like 25% of all written dialogue
-Make it ~30 hours
-Get rid of all randomly generated quests
 
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Drog Black Tooth

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Feb 20, 2008
Messages
2,636
I'm still amazed at what they did with the compass. Not for one, but TWO games. Oblivion? Fair enough try it, see how it goes. But to keep it for Skyrim? Ye gads, they must simply be the thickest, dumbest mother fuckers to ever stain our planet.
You never played Faggot 3?

Actually a lot of Skyrim's mechanics come directly from it. You could say it was a testing bed for their next TES game. Just off the top of my head: dialog trees, inventory lists, etc.
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
I'm still amazed at what they did with the compass. Not for one, but TWO games. Oblivion? Fair enough try it, see how it goes. But to keep it for Skyrim? Ye gads, they must simply be the thickest, dumbest mother fuckers to ever stain our planet.
You never played Faggot 3?

Actually a lot of Skyrim's mechanics come directly from it. You could say it was a testing bed for their next TES game. Just off the top of my head: dialog trees, inventory lists, etc.

Yup. FO3's a much better game than Skyrim IMO, but it suffers from the same problem exploration wise.

The only thing which helps in FO3 is how the areas are linked together, as the subways often take you to other regions. So, even though you can head to a marker on your compass, you're never quite sure where you'll ultimately end up. It still retains an element of "exporeryness" and mystery. Whereas in Skyrim most of the time you know exatly where you'll end up - back at the start of the dungeon.
 

Quillon

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,214
Tis already been designed and getting implemented as we speak; humongous map consists of most of the main continent with more than a hundred convenient locations to build your own villages, which will in turn generate infinite quests. Everybody will make their own content to enjoy, no two players' experience will be the same; bethesda's pure genius masterpiece it shall be!
 

Lahey

Laheyist
Patron
Joined
Jun 10, 2017
Messages
1,467
Grab the Codex by the pussy
Let's imagine you were hired by Bethesda as a consultant to help work on the mechanics of TES6 because "some external inspiration is needed" (i.e. they are in development hell) You cannot be fired short of killing Todd Howard, and your suggestions will be given weight but are still subject to revision. What would you do?
The first step would be to court Zenimax founder/chairman/CEO Robert Altman's daughter, Jessica Altman. Her mother is Lynda Carter so she turned out alright:
Lynda+Carter+Jessica+Altman+Paley+Honors+Celebrating+Y5tTfU5RFUgl.jpg

After marrying into the family, stage two would involve influencing Robert with chan agitprop to convince him of Godd's death. I would gently stoke his fears as a Clinton supporter by reminding him of how dangerous memes can be, gaslighting him into giving me full creative and financial control, circumventing your conditions. This would, of course, all be a ruse in order to stagnate production via development hell and commit as many white-collar crimes as possible through patsies. Money would hemhorrage from the media giant through an international web of shell companies and fraudulent investment schemes, their eventual discovery and prosecution creating a domino wave large enough to instigate a second gaming crash.

The decline would end overnight. Men would drink in celebration while their wives weep tears of joy at the thought of their children growing up in a more perfect world. After seven days and nights of celebration, I would ride off into the sunset on my motorcycle to seek a new adventure, Jessica's pregnant wailing drowned out by the sound of Freebird playing in my head.
 

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
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Kelethin
I would make a real RPG for a change.

Hardcoded Factions:
Races and factions within the world will have varying love/hate/neutral relationships with each other. The player will affect this with what they do. If you kill some travelling merchants, you could find some entire town will want your blood and attack you on sight. You can fix this by doing things they would like, like killing their enemies.

Have real stats and have them matter:
AC, strength, Dex, Agi, Cha, Stam, Int, Wis, etc. If you make a spell caster you can build him to be a battlemage by improving AC, agi, etc. Or you can make him a glass cannon by just spending everything on int.

Have real classes with real combat:
Instead of being just a generic warrior, mage, or rogue/ranger type, or a generic mixture of the three, there should be a genuine class system. Warriors should be able to leap at enemies from 30 foot away, and stun them. They should have area attacks that hit everything nearby, they should be able to taunt targets, stun, attack legs to slow them down, attack arms to weaken attacks, attack the head to stun and have a chance of blinding, etc. Rangers should be able to shoot a 100 arrows into the sky that fall in an area, snaring everything that gets hit and poisoning them. They should have flaming arrows that cause cloth wearing enemies or treants etc to burn, but do no damage to a rock golem etc. They should have piercing arrows that travel through multiple targets. Every class should have depth and require tactical play. A Necromancer should have pets that can actually be controlled. Attack this, back off, focus this target, don't assist me when attacked, pretend to be dead, etc. Then they should have ways to control battles so they don't have to kite everything stupidly. You should be able to permanently charm a weaker enemy, then buff it up, give it some health regeneration, and have it act as your pet. You fight by letting the pet fight your enemies and you stay behind it and nuke shit, heal your pet, mez, blind, enfeeble, etc. your enemies. Mana should matter, and so should aggro management. Damage over time spells should cost less mana but take a while to do their thing, they also cause very little aggro. Direct damage should cause a lot of damage instantly, but causes major aggro and uses a lot of mana. You should be able to have roots come out the ground and hold your target in place so you can attack them from range, and put others to sleep. But it should be balanced so that doing this is dangerous. The roots break randomly and with direct damage, the enemies should run as fast as you and should kill you in seconds if you are wearing cloth etc. Wizards should be able to teleport enemies towards you and away from you in groups, and great distances. Throw them into the air to hurt or kill them as they fall. Turn the ground into lava in a huge area and you watch stuff fall into it, and then you create a delayed blast fireball trap nearby that blasts enemies into the lava pit you summoned. If it isn't as fun as Dark Messiah, don't release. You should also be able to play as a Druid that uses wisdom instead of intelligence, and has a different set of spells. Can turn into a wolf and have a different set of skills to use, can turn into a bear and get different stuff again and different stats. Should be able to heal as much as it can do damage. Should excel at fighting outside using the sun and moon to aid powerful spells. Sun burns their eyes and they attack wildly without being able to see you or anything. Call for the aid of the forest, treants and wolves come to aid you in battle. Etc....

Have real locations and dungeons:
Dungeons should be huge and well designed for a change. Fake walls, fake floors and traps you can fall into. Some enemies should use stealth and make surprise attacks on you. You should get lost in the dungeons instead of just following a linear path in your shitty McDungeon. There should be special 'named' enemies in each dungeon that are really hard to kill, but will reward you with a unique item if you kill them. Not just special gear like a great pair of leggings or boots or a sword or something, but utility items as well: run speed buffs, invisibility clicky, illusions, etc. If you try to kill a named and die and fail, you should be able to go back later when you are a bit stronger and try again. There should varied locations (and dungeons), a city in a volcano that have a master shaman who controls the lava within to protect his city. One wrong step and you fall into lava, the air should be full of sulphurous smoke etc. There should be dense misty forests with forest sprites and creatures hiding in the trees, etc. A desert with stuff that lives in the sand and weird nomadic tribes people who roam it. Vast green planes. A dwarven city chiselled out of the side of a mountain. Etc.

Have fewer shitty fedex side quests, and focus on having a long and interesting main storyline:
The story should be exciting to play. You should be tasked with assassinating someone who lives in a castle keep within a city, and they are all waiting for you. So you need to use stealth or invisibility to get inside the city and carefully make your way to the keep. Mages will be keeping a watch for you and can see through your stealth. Getting into the keep should be a Thief type experience of clever stealth and then you kill your target without them fleeing or calling too much assistance, then you need to escape. Next objective is to recover an item from a dungeon. Next you must investigate a missing person, etc. It should take at least 20 hours and take you all over the world and should be interesting. Stuff like the Baldurs Gate games should be the benchmark for how long it should take and how intricate it should be. The story itself doesn't necessary need to be complex, but the adventure itself should be, and should take you all over the world and do lots interesting things.

It should have consequence:
Get rid of the savegame and load game mechanic. Have it work as a semi persistent world. You attune yourself to a location and when you die, you will be brought back to life there, but you will be weaker for a while and you will lose experience. Dying should actually matter.

There should be multiple companion options:
Say you pick a Mage and find it very hard, you should be able to hire a warrior to come along with you and help out. You should be able to set up how they fight, similar to Dragon Age. Say you pick a warrior and struggle to chop your way through stuff, you could hire a priest to come along and help you with heals. But the downside of this should be that they take some of your experience and require regular payments. This combined with game difficulty levels should let anyone play it, pros can go solo, consoletards can hire a healer to help out.

There should be a prestige race and class that needs to be unlocked:
Only once you complete the game on Normal difficulty, and without using a companion, will you unlock the unique race and class.


You know, stuff like that... a real RPG. It will never happen. No point spending money to design and test all these intricate systems when you can just release a generic hack n slash with dragons that fly backwards, and 12 million people buy it in the first month. To make the biggest selling RPG ever, you just spend all your money on graphics, voice overs, animation, and paying for review scores. Gut all the complexities
 
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Dawkinsfan69

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I'd trash the series. We don't need another shallow dumbass open world game. Morrowind accomplished everything they needed to accomplish with the series and they've just been dragging it out.

If I had to design a game for them though I would just make an MMO/online game set in whatever province that straight rips off Dark Souls combat. Dungeons built for 3-5 people and raids for 8-10, FFA pvp.

I'd also cut all voice acting and any writing would be purely text to scare off the plebs.
 

Wysardry

Augur
Patron
Joined
Feb 26, 2004
Messages
283
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Tell them to hire Interkarma and remake Daggerfall without the bugs and with all the content they dropped due to not finishing in time.
 

Epsilon

Cipher
Joined
Jul 11, 2009
Messages
428
1. Look at what worked for Daggerfall. Figure out why it worked.
2. Realise that Daggerfall was good because it was the closest thing we've ever had to a 3d roguelike.
3. Perfect Daggerfall's formula of randomized quests and dungeons. Come up with a modular tiered design that determines how rooms should fit together and have the quest difficulty determine the size and scope of the possible dungeon.
4. Make expand on the data, allowing people to mod it and modify it to generate more content.
5. Sell DLC content packs to people that allows for greater range of customisation and watch as all the modders wet themselves. You now have the game that never ends, and never dries up with content.
6. Continue on selling the same game for the next ten years because of modding.
 

Ramnozack

Cipher
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Messages
876
I would tell them to cuck Obsidian, tell them to drop PoE 2 development and get to work on TES 6.
 

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