The Elder Scrolls - Where Does The Elder Scrolls Go From Here?

Couchpotato

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US Gamer has an interesting article about the future of The Elder Scroll games.

So what form will The Elder Scrolls VI take? The franchise stands at a sort of crossroads right now. Skyrim pushed the boundaries of visual quality and persistence within the series. With a few minor mods, its PC version can be downright stunning, and it has a remarkable capacity to remember what's changed -- even an arrow you fired off and lost track of 100 hours earlier. Skyrim also pushed the limits of console hardware, barely even running on PlayStation 3 and making the Xbox 360 whimper for mercy as well.

At the same time, Skyrim greatly simplified many of the series' mechanics, much to the dismay of long-time enthusiasts. While some of its streamlining proved to be a welcome sight -- did anyone really miss the Acrobatics stat, which inevitably inspired players to grind for it by jumping like idiots from one end of Tamriel to the other? -- the loss of other features struck some players as an unfortunate dumbing-down of the game to appeal to the console audience. The simplified menu system, for example, worked perfectly on a console controller, but those who preferred mouse-and-keyboard controllers detested it.

More information.
 
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it has a remarkable capacity to remember what's changed — even an arrow you fired off and lost track of 100 hours earlier.
Yea, it was in my knee.

Seriously… Who gives a damn about an useless arrow?
 
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that lost arrow thing leads to save bloat iirc. thankfully fixed by mods.

edit: not just the 1 arrow, of course. But the thing where stuff doesn't get cleaned up from cells
 
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I missed the acrobatic skills. Not because you had to jump around like crazy but because it allowed a different play style. The acrobatic skill allowed a different perception of the environment, that sloppy cliff was no longer a dangerous path to take but rather a path that could help and escape or even lead a pursuing enemy to the death.

It does not prevent the author from claiming the usual dumbing down, even though removing the acrobatic skill decreased the depth of the relationship to the environment.

After playing Skyrim though, it was clear why the acrobatic skills had no place in the game. The studio somehow upped the pathfinding process and now, NPCs no longer risk themselves on dangerous terrain. Without an acrobatic skill, it is easy to get them lose your tracks and as they no longer pursue on dangerous terrain, they will never face death that way.
Pushing back the acrobatic skills would have meant adding more code for the NCPS with an acrobatic skill to apprehend the terrain in the proper way. Considering the load, the move was not possible.

The article was potentially interesting because it could read out the future of game mechanics.

And another for whom in a roleplaying game, combat is everything. The article does not break down the potential of a RPG, the evolution of game mechanics must be about combat alone.

In a RPG, combat is just of one of the potential activities a player can engage his character to enable role playing. When combat is everything, you're on something else.

The article refers to thaco. Thaco? It is a turn based concept. Turn sequences like UGOIGO must balance out the certainty of outcomes by randomness. They have no other choices.

When a shooter moves around to get to the back of the target and shoot at it from the back, five meters away, comparatively, the uncertainty lies in the outcome of moving onto the back of the target. Once it is done, shooting is the easy part.

Turn based games, especiially UGOIGO, reverse the proposition. Moving onto the back is the easy part because of the way movement and time are decoupled. That is why randomness must be shifted heavily to the next outcome: shooting and hitting. That is why you need to get a 80 per cent chances of hitting (or lower) instead of the 99 pc called by the situation.

If developpers know how to make ranged combat games, melee combat is still difficult.

The way up for the next ES is not to focus on combat, that is to focus on the rest. Even when you think of TES as narrative games. The article could have gone a long way to explore how game mechanics could be improved in order to further the narration experience.
 
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I just had to google UGOIGO... I thought it was some cool game I was missing out on! :)
 
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Google corrected it automatically fortunately. Top site for IGOUGO is a hotel company that books travel... kinda figured it wasn't that one!

On-topic, I was glad to see the back of acrobatics in the Skyrim. I think it could work with a system that doesn't give you skill points when you spend the game spamming the jump button as you wander around, but I thought it was a bit annoying in Oblivion.
 
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if they could have climbing like in gothic (don't really see why not) and fix pathfinding ai, i would love to see acrobatics back. As for combat, I can't play it without at least a weapon reach mod (and don't want to without Duke Patrick's mod). Vanilla had me getting hit by enemies when visually their weapon/claw was still half a body length away from me. As I usually play an evasive (backstep) instead of a blocking character, it was an instant game breaker for me.
 
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Go full-on into the Khajit, or even the Argonians. The entire game centered on the struggle of the beast races against the oppression of Imperial might
 
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