Skyrim - 5 Five Ways to Make the Next Elder Scrolls Game Better @ Forbes

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Forbes Magazine has an editorial penned by Eric Kain on how to make the next TES game better than Skyrim. He has 5 wishes for TESVI (6) so that it can be a better game than Skyrim. Link to the article at Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/07/11/
5-ways-to-make-the-next-elder-scrolls-game-awesome/


One of his wishes are this:
4) Hone character development and integrate some kind of class system.
The open-leveling system in Skyrim has its benefits, for sure, but sometimes limits can make a game even better. I like games that give me open development paths, but I want those paths to have some logic to them and some restrictions that provide challenges in and of themselves. For instance, in Dragon’s Dogma you can switch your character class as you go, but depending on what you start out as, different skills and items will be open or closed to you.
Another wish is this:
#2) Better storytelling.
Open world games present unique challenges for storytelling. Skyrim’s all in-game scenes and dialogue should delight someone like me who complains broken-record-like of the over-use of cutscenes. But Skyrim’s dialogue is too abundant, too wooden, and too full of needless exposition. Why can’t the story unfold as we play rather than in rooms where everyone is just…standing around? Why not make storytelling just a bit more sparse and action-packed – less talking, more doing and seeing and, well, gaming. You could learn half the things you need to know while riding from one city to the next, or while fighting a pack of bandits.
More information.
 
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That text lacks of #6. It can be squeezed inside #3, but it would make a stronger point as a separate section.

#6 No endless mobrespawning.
 
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Darksouls II????

Darksouls II and Dragon's Dogma. Right... And he wants a better Elder Scrolls? Maybe he should first learn what's an RPG and THEN write the article. Citing these two as examples as what he would be expecting from the perfect Skyrim ruins everything. The game is far from perfect, but it not a dumb dungeon crawler.
 
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5 - the stats: You know, I didn't miss the stats at all. What I want is to be able to strongly customize how my character plays. I don't care if you use skills, stats, equipment... as long as the end result is that my character is fairly unique then you get credit.

4 - classes: Hell no. The best class in Bethesda Elder Scrolls games has been the 'custom' class. They might as well dump the others.

3 - no fetch quests: Great, Bethesda changes all the fetch quests to be kill-a-boss quests. It's easy to say "no more fetch quests" but I'm not going to pay much attention unless you can come up with some original ideas for getting the player into the dungeon.

2 - better storytelling: This game seemed pretty good at it to me. Particularly the end of the story - that was pure awesome! I'm always happy to see even better story telling but I don't get this "more action" thing? Has he really got so little patience that he can't just sit and listen for a few minutes??

1 - Combat. Yeah, it could definitely use better melee fighting. Rocksteady's combat in Batman has spoiled me rotten. Ranged seems pretty good, though I still long for the old days of Thief when I had to arc my bow shots.

After playing Dark Souls, Dragon’s Dogma, and a number of other games recently, the flaws in Skyrim become all the more glaring – and the fixes become all the more obvious.
What?? He wants Elder Scrolls to go toward action RPGs? He even says Skyrim IS an action RPG! Who is this guy!?
 
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Maybe he saw as I did a spanish game program on tv where Skyrim was featured in the anticipated top ten action games among the cod and battlefield.Other then that I assume all can be considered valid except 4.
 
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all of this is moot as elder scrolls 6 will come out the earliest in 2016.
 
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Darksouls II and Dragon's Dogma. Right…

I agree with him, it's hard to not be a bit disapointed with Skyrim's combat after playing those two, especially Dark Souls.

I like classes in games, i hate Witcher 1 because you just have 1 class and there's enough points to spend to master almost everything, no fun in that, especially if you want to play the game more than once. In Skyrim everyone's a mage class, that also sucks. They need to learn where restrictions are good and fun and when they're wrong and just makes the game dull.
 
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1. Skyrim is clearly an action-RPG. IMO, it's more of an action-RPG than Diablo and its clones are. I never liked that term for Diablolikes.

2. I can speak for Dragon's Dogma, but Dark Souls and Demon's Souls both have much better combat than Skyrim. It's more hardcore and intricate, and it just feels more involving. I think Skyrim's combat would certainly be made better by adding a touch of Dark Souls/Demon Souls.
 
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Bethesda is one of the few studios that are still obviously working on trying to bring RPG to computers and none of the stated improvements would help the next TES on that path.

Some expectations are as often hardly compatible. Bringing back dexterity and adding a lock on system for example. Good luck with that to provide a meaning to the dexterity stat.
 
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I disagree with the want for class systems (point 4). I really don't believe that *every* ROPG should have classes. In my opinion this is merely the product of people getting used to (A)D&D clases, nothing else.
 
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A RPG can be classless but class is a useful tool when it comes to define and contextualize roles. Usually, roles are split into little sub units (including class) that help determining what constraints go with a role etc
 
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A RPG can be classless but class is a useful tool when it comes to define and contextualize roles. Usually, roles are split into little sub units (including class) that help determining what constraints go with a role etc

But some of those constraints take me out of it. Like how you can't use certain armor just because you're a knight and not a thief.

TES has been about step by step removing arbitrary constraints, first with allowing you to equip everything you can see. Skills just determine effectiveness and no longer defined ability to wear. TES classes were just attribute and skill templates, they didn't constrain you either but they just didn't reward you for leveling the 'wrong' skill.

Funnily enough I haven't played a mage character yet despite there being no gameplay system that constrains me.

I do think there should be some constraints in Skyrim / The next TES game, but I'd rather they weren't in character creation (ie: picking a class) but rather in the game world where you can only join certain guilds if you have certain prerequisite skills or atributes (like in Morrowind).

The whole 'class' idea seems silly to me on a completely etymological point. Shouldn't they be called careers or jobs. And guess what, you can actually change carreers or jobs in real life.

Sidebar: A game with actual classes, you know the ones you can't really progress from, would be interesting. If you play a pauper certain areas of the world are not availlable to you. If you start a new playthough as Lord you see the world from a different perspective.
 
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I will go out and say this:

there's an easy way to make the next Elder Scrolls a better game: make it less of an RPG than it already is.

The reason? Skyrim sucks as an RPG, but it's pretty entertaining as an exploration action game. If they drop the tedious and POINTLESS stuff out (like inventory management, skill management, dialog choices), it'd be an awesome game.

Well, a good game. Maybe even great.

Of course, that has always been the way Bethesda has taken their game towards, since Morrowind. Except they half ass it. My guess is well need ("need") to ENDURE their progressive "dumbing down", or should I say actionification? And wait for Elder Scrolls 10 or something for a decent game free of the RPG bounds that never really existed because Bethesda SUCKS at RPGs big time and always has.
 
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The reason? Skyrim sucks as an RPG, but it's pretty entertaining as an exploration action game. If they drop the tedious and POINTLESS stuff out (like inventory management, skill management, dialog choices), it'd be an awesome game.

TES can grow into a RPG without either inventory, skill management.
 
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But some of those constraints take me out of it. Like how you can't use certain armor just because you're a knight and not a thief.

TES has been about step by step removing arbitrary constraints, first with allowing you to equip everything you can see. Skills just determine effectiveness and no longer defined ability to wear. TES classes were just attribute and skill templates, they didn't constrain you either but they just didn't reward you for leveling the 'wrong' skill.

Funnily enough I haven't played a mage character yet despite there being no gameplay system that constrains me.

I do think there should be some constraints in Skyrim / The next TES game, but I'd rather they weren't in character creation (ie: picking a class) but rather in the game world where you can only join certain guilds if you have certain prerequisite skills or atributes (like in Morrowind).

The whole 'class' idea seems silly to me on a completely etymological point. Shouldn't they be called careers or jobs. And guess what, you can actually change carreers or jobs in real life.

Sidebar: A game with actual classes, you know the ones you can't really progress from, would be interesting. If you play a pauper certain areas of the world are not availlable to you. If you start a new playthough as Lord you see the world from a different perspective.

Skyrim has no role to play. It can be a RPG. And most of the constraints as they are quoted are not what helps to define a role.
 
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I pretty much agree to the rest, but fuck the class system. If i want to make a character, that likes to dabble in alchemy to poison that huge fucking halberd of his then why do i need an artificial limit, that says "No, you can't have both of those skills!". Let me deicide what skills my char has and let his stats influence how good he can be at these. Limit the amount of skills a char can have at a reasonable level, and limit characters level, but leave the classes out. They are a lazy mans tool anyway.
 
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all of this is moot as elder scrolls 6 will come out the earliest in 2016.
How does that make anything moot?

Are you one of those who believes the world will end before then?
 
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