Bethesda`s simplification and rectification needed for ES6

[None of your bee wax!]

This is not me trying for a hate thread or a echo chamber; I`m merely fed up with Bethesda`s constant cutting of corners with game development and their poor decision making when it come to "innovations" for their games. To that end I am setting out a list of issue that have been going on for the past twenty years or so, that I have noticed to have grown into far more major and crippling flaws that bring down most titles in one way or another. This is not in any specificity order, but what personally is most important to me on player enjoyment.


1. Damage dealt to the player and in-turn by the player to enemy's is anemic at best. Most attacks fail to deliver crippling damage due to level limiting what is allowed to be dished out or limiting enemy spawn in both skill level and equipment they can be equipped with. This in-turn makes combat drawn-out slugfest and/or to become a stealth archer on every playthrough. (Almost everyone relies on critical hits to deal most of their damage to hostiles, to the point we remember spawn points and enemy placement like a Dark Souls player) Every Bethesda game has had this problem and they have refuse look into solving this time waster as it pads out hours of "Gameplay".


2/2a. Customization has been simplified to almost nothing. So much is micro changes that levels only feel and act slightly differently at level chunks. (You feel like you play at level five until level twenty and then it repeats with level thirty-five and so-on) We currently have mostly just "Perks" which have a few "increases to player abilities", but lack differing gameplay changes to create unique styles. (Lack of new combat abilities like grapple and throwing, or other such abilities like duel wielding to get unique combat benefits/disadvantages with ranged and melee weapons.) This includes Gear which is incredibly mono-use in that it is a set of; weight, resistance of a few or multiple and a skin it shares with a few others that go up a few notches per level plane. There are no gameplay changes like having armor make you faster at the cost of increased enemy awareness or having trinket that turns everyone hostile but greatly increases Experience points when equipped. The whole point of RPG`s is that you create a experience, and apart of that is being able to make bad decisions or weighing options and tools to tackle objective with your own problem solving skills. Bad options are apart of the experience.


3/2b. The Qualities of RPG`s are being limited by what values and morals Bethesda wants us to share with them, so much that being evil or not wanting to align with the set "story characters" is impossible to do outside of mods. Just being able to chose what We as People want to do, is being slimed down so Bethesda can give us a "Hero" story; being cheered on as characters we don`t care about try to get us to like them like some strange High School fanfiction by collage dropouts. (No, I will not be nice when it comes my ability to chose if I do or do not want to help The Minute men/Constellation in the base game. Only us, the players are responsible for what we do in the privacy of our game session on Tuesdays nights, and only the flying spaghetti monster may judge our collective souls.)


4. Writing has been steadily going down in quality as each entry come around, so much that they are afraid to offend people. Most remember in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion with the dark brotherhood quest, where you could figure out the traitor by bring back the severed head, or cannibal town of Andale with its "charming characters" and "sensible" out look of the post-apocalypse; which none of these stories exist in post fallout 3 Bethesda writing. They have spent almost all their energy trying to make funny "relatable and nice" beings for you to interact and nothing else. Even the institute has more "wacky" then die-hard mad scientist in its roster, despite what Father seems to portray. Overall they hesitate to have actual flaws for groups and individuals to struggle with, and in-turn give no reason to root or oppose groups other then who has the most aesthetic pallet that speaks to you. (It`s almost like the gear and writing mirror each other.) The only real likable aspect of companions is their ability to contribute in a fight then their background or their identity. (God, the amount of Preston Garvey mods where he can`t talk and is a Nude Himbo is unreal.)


5. Paid mods need to be either full DLC expansions with the content of such, or need to be cheap bundle packs with a bakers dozen of reskins of existing items for a few pennies at most. The fact that we have the Bethesda mod page with Gauss Rifle for almost five dollar's is pathetic. If Bethesda wants more money and wants to filter out future developers for their teams, then they should expect us to pay a reasonable price for the product being served, and not front load the files onto our Hard Drive for things we never bought. The customer should be the number one focus, and Bethesda seems to be content with serving cheep slop.


6. The Game engine needs to be replaced with one that is at the very least easy to train new people on, and has support by the Original programing team. I don`t think this needs to be explained, but the engine has been slowing down development with each year it gets "updated" and adds more bugs on top of legacy issue that crop up every new release. The fact we don`t have a dedicated program from Bethesda for separating mod saves from normal saves is not justifiable anymore in this day and age. We need a more robust engine that is up to modern standards and needs. (fallout 4 was single core for its entire processing and running the game, modern computers have around two for cheap laptops to eight-teen for dedicated rigs.) We don`t need Crysis level Graphics, but we should have comparable graphics to games a few years old and the ability to mod for higher end custom computers.



Hope you enjoyed my rant and I hope you will share your idea.

 

[AllyDoodle]

I admit the engine the use now is old and should be replaced but Beth would still get crucified if the new engine isn't moddable as the old one.

 

[None of your bee wax!]

I admit the engine the use now is old and should be replaced but Beth would still get crucified if the new engine isn't moddable as the old one.

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Half-life Alxy has mod support, and Unreal engine 5 is free for development. Neither should be too hard to create a moding kit for regular use with limited editing of the games files, but again it should be on Bethesda to make sure it will be viable.

 

[Andy333]

Its needs to be source engine, because the idea of the good fashioned Bethesda jank combined with the sheer insanity of Half Life jank would probably destroy everyone's computer.

 

[AztecCroc]

1. Damage dealt to the player and in-turn by the player to enemy's is anemic at best. Most attacks fail to deliver crippling damage due to level limiting what is allowed to be dished out or limiting enemy spawn in both skill level and equipment they can be equipped with. This in-turn makes combat drawn-out slugfest and/or to become a stealth archer on every playthrough. (Almost everyone relies on critical hits to deal most of their damage to hostiles, to the point we remember spawn points and enemy placement like a Dark Souls player) Every Bethesda game has had this problem and they have refuse look into solving this time waster as it pads out hours of "Gameplay".

Click to shrink...

Change what difficulty you're playing on, you've either got it too high (if you're bothered by how little damage you're dealing) or too low (if you're bothered by the enemies not dealing enough).

2/2a. Customization has been simplified to almost nothing. So much is micro changes that levels only feel and act slightly differently at level chunks. (You feel like you play at level five until level twenty and then it repeats with level thirty-five and so-on) We currently have mostly just "Perks" which have a few "increases to player abilities", but lack differing gameplay changes to create unique styles. (Lack of new combat abilities like grapple and throwing, or other such abilities like duel wielding to get unique combat benefits/disadvantages with ranged and melee weapons.) This includes Gear which is incredibly mono-use in that it is a set of; weight, resistance of a few or multiple and a skin it shares with a few others that go up a few notches per level plane. There are no gameplay changes like having armor make you faster at the cost of increased enemy awareness or having trinket that turns everyone hostile but greatly increases Experience points when equipped. The whole point of RPG`s is that you create a experience, and apart of that is being able to make bad decisions or weighing options and tools to tackle objective with your own problem solving skills. Bad options are apart of the experience.

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Ok, this one's take a bit more.

• Gear that affects how fast you move is incredibly unpleasant in terms of game feel to most people, regardless of whether it's speeding you up or slowing you down. Especially in a game like Skyrim where you change it as often as you do.
• Skyrim, while it doesn't have Oblivion's custom magic (mostly for optimization reasons, Skyrim actually kind of ran like shit on the computers of its original time), has the same amount of customization as any previous entry in the series. Fallout 3, NV, and 4 have less than 1 and 2, but 1 and 2 were semi-turn based tactical strategy RPGs, 3 on are real-time action RPGs, a lot of stuff that got cut got cut because it didn't work in non-turn based combat. The sheer amount of kludge they had go through just to keep VATS is absurd.
• Neither the Elder Scrolls nor Fallout ever had grappling available as an option to the player.
• Skyrim already has dual-wielding.

3/2b. The Qualities of RPG`s are being limited by what values and morals Bethesda wants us to share with them, so much that being evil or not wanting to align with the set "story characters" is impossible to do outside of mods. Just being able to chose what We as People want to do, is being slimed down so Bethesda can give us a "Hero" story; being cheered on as characters we don`t care about try to get us to like them like some strange High School fanfiction by collage dropouts. (No, I will not be nice when it comes my ability to chose if I do or do not want to help The Minute men/Constellation in the base game. Only us, the players are responsible for what we do in the privacy of our game session on Tuesdays nights, and only the flying spaghetti monster may judge our collective souls.)

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Heaven forbid the game developers try to tell a story rather than just give you a randomly generated sandbox to fuck around in however you desire. Is it necessarily a good story? Eh. But they can't put in options for every single possible thought that passes through your head, they've got budget, time, and (since Bethesa games are usually for the PC) disc space limitations to keep in mind, and most people would rather have those devoted to new unique content than more minor a variations on what already exists and can't be seen without starting a new run.

4. Writing has been steadily going down in quality as each entry come around, so much that they are afraid to offend people. Most remember in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion with the dark brotherhood quest, where you could figure out the traitor by bring back the severed head, or cannibal town of Andale with its "charming characters" and "sensible" out look of the post-apocalypse; which none of these stories exist in post fallout 3 Bethesda writing. They have spent almost all their energy trying to make funny "relatable and nice" beings for you to interact and nothing else. Even the institute has more "wacky" then die-hard mad scientist in its roster, despite what Father seems to portray. Overall they hesitate to have actual flaws for groups and individuals to struggle with, and in-turn give no reason to root or oppose groups other then who has the most aesthetic pallet that speaks to you. (It`s almost like the gear and writing mirror each other.) The only real likable aspect of companions is their ability to contribute in a fight then their background or their identity. (God, the amount of Preston Garvey mods where he can`t talk and is a Nude Himbo is unreal.)

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Ah yes, post Fallout 3, a selection of games that just includes Fallouts New Vegas and 4 and also Starfield. Gee I wonder why they'd want to keep the writing consistent between games in the same series. As for Starfield, I haven't played it, but it's literally the first new game they've put out in like a decade, and it was in development hell for most of that decade. It being a bit doofy isn't great, but it's not exactly unexpected. Again, remember most of that writing is probably closer to a decade old than not.

5. Paid mods need to be either full DLC expansions with the content of such, or need to be cheap bundle packs with a bakers dozen of reskins of existing items for a few pennies at most. The fact that we have the Bethesda mod page with Gauss Rifle for almost five dollar's is pathetic. If Bethesda wants more money and wants to filter out future developers for their teams, then they should expect us to pay a reasonable price for the product being served, and not front load the files onto our Hard Drive for things we never bought. The customer should be the number one focus, and Bethesda seems to be content with serving cheep slop.

Click to shrink...

Paid mods were originally Valve's idea, not Bethesda's. They just kept them around so people wouldn't sue them for removing things they'd paid money for.
Also "front load the files onto our Hard Drive for things we never bought" that's how DLC's worked for basically all PC games since the late 2000s. It's a lot easier on both the developer putting out updates and Steam or GoG or whatever store you use to just give you all the files and just disable some code if the DLC flags disabled. It means they only have to maintain one version of the game rather than god only knows how many depending on how many DLCs the game in question has.

6. The Game engine needs to be replaced with one that is at the very least easy to train new people on, and has support by the Original programing team. I don`t think this needs to be explained, but the engine has been slowing down development with each year it gets "updated" and adds more bugs on top of legacy issue that crop up every new release. The fact we don`t have a dedicated program from Bethesda for separating mod saves from normal saves is not justifiable anymore in this day and age. We need a more robust engine that is up to modern standards and needs. (fallout 4 was single core for its entire processing and running the game, modern computers have around two for cheap laptops to eight-teen for dedicated rigs.) We don`t need Crysis level Graphics, but we should have comparable graphics to games a few years old and the ability to mod for higher end custom computers.

Click to shrink...

Once again, barring Starfield (which was originally meant to come out 5-ish years ago) the most recent Bethesda game is Fallout 4, released 8 fucking years ago with the rest being even older. Fallout New Vegas is a decade old, Skyrim is from 2011, and Fallout 3 is from 2008. They look and feel old because they are fucking old. When most of them were released it was in fact very common for all but the most dedicated of gaming computers to be single core. Single core desktop pre-builts were in active production until 2013. Starfield is literally the first game they've released where the expectation that most of their audience could run a game that requires multi-threading is reasonable.

In conclusion, you seem to not quite grasp just how much more powerful the average computer is now compared to a decade or how old most of Bethesda's game library is.

Also you seem to want first person sandbox DnD, which is not and never has been what the Elder Scrolls was intended to be. And most of what you think you want would either feel awful to use or be far too clunky and awkward to actually be fun or use with a controller.

 

[gereh]

So the main problem with the combat is (imo) that they can't commit to make action game combat, so they just take some elements add them to the games realize that they don't work out of the box and that they need to remove some stuff from they previous combat. And so it turns into this unholy combination that isn't really action combat but also has lost the strength of the old combat systems.

A good example for that is comparing melee in Morrowind with melee in Skyrim.

In Morrowind, hitting an opponent was completely chance based. The player had a chance to hit, and the opponent had a chance to evade. But since there was (almost) no need to try for different positions in a fight, this allowed the game to use the movement input for different things, so depending on how you move while attacking you will deal chopping, slashing, or thrusting damage. (Which wasn't balanced at all because chapping was the strongest and the easiest to archive). So we had different damage types and some weapons were stronger for thrusting (spears, daggers) while other were better for slashing (long blades). Which added a certain type of combat depths.

In Skyrim you have the action game aspects, so it all about what you see on screen, so hitting the opponent with the weapon will be a hit. But because you have to move around more during combat to keep up with your opponent, the whole damage type based on movement had to go. (They could have kept it but having to think about damage type as well as position, while moving around would probably not feel good). So they had to sacrifice combat depth for this more action focused approach. It also meant the hit chance was gone, so to balance things out they only have amount of damage dealt to work with.

Same goes for blocking, it's no longer chance based in Skyrim, so it's "if the attack connects with you shield, you block" instead, but that is way to easy, so they needed to change it to "you still take damage on a successful block" (instead of you only take magic damage). Which made this feel a lot less impressive.

Now if we just take a look at this, in Morrowind you had: Hit chance, Weapon Damage, Opponents Armour Rating, Opponents Health, Opponents Block Chance, and Opponents Evasion to balance combat, In Skyrim you have Weapon Damage, Opponents Armour Rating, Opponents Health. With Enemies you don't have so much control over Armour rating (especially since the armour is supposed to fit, so a forsworn should wear their gear) and you can't really control Player Damage in games that are so open, so they only have Opponent Health to work with, which is the cause for enemies with ton of health that feel just frustrating to fight (not saying that the other systems doesn't have it's own frustrating enemies, anything with high evasion is a pain in MW, just pointing out that balancing combat with only one point you can really adjust is a lot more difficult compared to the morrowind alternative).

So a lot of changes make sense if you look at it from the perspective of "We have an old system and want to introduce action combat into it". But (imho) that is just not the way to go, if they want action combat, they should build a system around that instead of picking elements and trying to make something that "just works".

My personal dream would be that they take inspiration from Vermintide for the combat design. (Which of course means there would be a need to come up with a lore reason for a lot of squishy enemies, but I feel like there are ways to do that)

P.S. I don't say anything about armour rating, because armour is busted in skyrim thanks to "tempering" so it's save to just assume player has max damage reduction at lvl 25+

The Qualities of RPG`s are being limited by what values and morals Bethesda wants us to share with them, so much that being evil or not wanting to align with the set "story characters" is impossible to do outside of mods. Just being able to chose what We as People want to do, is being slimed down so Bethesda can give us a "Hero" story; being cheered on as characters we don`t care about try to get us to like them like some strange High School fanfiction by collage dropouts.

Click to shrink...

Honestly I don't care that much, like most people will play a "good" character anyway, so it makes sense to have the writing team focus on this) and if they could give us a good story for those type of characters that would be nice, but they are only giving us mediocre stories at best. Like there is enough (or at least more than in most other games) stuff for evil characters via DB, Thieves Guild and daedric prince quests.

The Game engine needs to be replaced with one that is at the very least easy to train new people on, and has support by the Original programing team. I don`t think this needs to be explained, but the engine has been slowing down development with each year it gets "updated" and adds more bugs on top of legacy issue that crop up every new release

Click to shrink...

I don't think we will be seeing this since Starfield runs on their "new engine" (which seems to be the old engine in disguise from what people told me)

 

[None of your bee wax!]

In conclusion, you seem to not quite grasp just how much more powerful the average computer is now compared to a decade or how old most of Bethesda's game library is.

Click to shrink...

When most of them were released it was in fact very common for all but the most dedicated of gaming computers to be single core. Single core desktop pre-builts were in active production until 2013. Starfield is literally the first game they've released where the expectation that most of their audience could run a game that requires multi-threading is reasonable.

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Not sure what I don`t grasp as far as core usage, one of the major bottle necks was the fact fallout 4 was limited to one core doing the lions share for everything. I think that would be a fare assessment when it come to the myriad of problems with Bethesda Softworks games. I believe that as companies grow, they should be capable of not repeating past mistakes, that; yes old games are far more limited but we shouldn`t still have similar or the same issue as yesterday. Plus, Starfield needs some fairly beefy computers to run half decently, so I don`t find your reasoning about the last hold outs of single core pre-builts credible reason for poor engine software.

Change what difficulty you're playing on, you've either got it too high (if you're bothered by how little damage you're dealing) or too low (if you're bothered by the enemies not dealing enough).

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For difficulty; that`s kinda the point. Just making the enemy's have more health while dealing more damage then to what the player could possibly do, is a old method of balancing. I don`t want less of a challenge, I just want enemy's to not be bullet sponges. I want them to follow that same balance I do. Simple as.

Heaven forbid the game developers try to tell a story rather than just give you a randomly generated sandbox to fuck around in however you desire. Is it necessarily a good story? Eh. But they can't put in options for every single possible thought that passes through your head, they've got budget, time, and (since Bethesa games are usually for the PC) disc space limitations to keep in mind, and most people would rather have those devoted to new unique content than more minor a variations on what already exists and can't be seen without starting a new run.

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As for games post Fallout 3, yea, we all know that're all a bit jank right? All of us enjoyed the formula to a degree, but we should expect that they improve more then just graphic fidelity. The whole point is that they have more resources after each title to do better. But we have seen that they haven`t pushed to give us more toys to diversify our adventures. Bethesda should have spent the time, post fallout 3 developing a great game with the breathing room obsidian bought them.

But they didn`t.

Skyrim was fun because it was more a sandbox then any other title so far; in spite of the terrible main quest to save the land from Alduin. The fact we can enter the Thalmor Embassy but can`t alert anyone of their part of the civil war is the point I just stopped playing the story quests. Fallout 4 was Skyrim with even less features and more railroading. I should have been able to just ignore or threaten the Minute men from entering sanctuary Hills, but I never got the option. In a world that was supposedly about my story, Bethesda is very keen on telling me just how I should interact their "characters" rather then letting me not like them, or - God forbid maybe hate them in-game. The worst sin a story teller can make is demand we the audience care about what they say. And Bethesda seem to think we play for the "gripping tale' they`ve "crafted" then the fact its more fun to fuck around with Dragon shouting wolves then talk with Ulfric.

Paid mods were originally Valve's idea, not Bethesda's. They just kept them around so people wouldn't sue them for removing things they'd paid money for.
Also "front load the files onto our Hard Drive for things we never bought" that's how DLC's worked for basically all PC games since the late 2000s. It's a lot easier on both the developer putting out updates and Steam or GoG or whatever store you use to just give you all the files and just disable some code if the DLC flags disabled. It means they only have to maintain one version of the game rather than god only knows how many depending on how many DLCs the game in question has.

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With games that have multi-player, I can agree updating to be compatible with other players, but Fallout 4 was not a multi-player game. It was single player only.

Barely anyone wanted Bethesda mods, let alone to pay for them. Not sure why you`re so convinced that single player games need gigabytes to give me hoarse armor I`ll never use, but I`ll let you be you on this one.

Ah yes, post Fallout 3, a selection of games that just includes Fallouts New Vegas and 4 and also Starfield. Gee I wonder why they'd want to keep the writing consistent between games in the same series. As for Starfield, I haven't played it, but it's literally the first new game they've put out in like a decade, and it was in development hell for most of that decade. It being a bit doofy isn't great, but it's not exactly unexpected. Again, remember most of that writing is probably closer to a decade old than not.

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Writing, really? You do know it`s about a handful of people writing for the past twenty five years or so. That`s why it has been so consistent, not by any measure of qualify control, but a lack of differing sources to bounce off ideas. And Bethesda never played any part of obsidians writing process.

Once again, barring Starfield (which was originally meant to come out 5-ish years ago) the most recent Bethesda game is Fallout 4, released 8 fucking years ago with the rest being even older. Fallout New Vegas is a decade old, Skyrim is from 2011, and Fallout 3 is from 2008. They look and feel old because they are fucking old.

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Why does delaying a game excuse it from being subpar? Balder`s Gate 3, as far as I can tell, was being developed since twenty-thirteen at the earliest, a whole ten years from scratch. And its been getting nothing but praise, most of it being all the little stupid things you can do. Even RoboCop: rogue city is almost the definition of a crappy Movie tie-in game; with all the dated mechanics and level designs, plus the sub-par voice acting that just kills the mood. Yet still has more balls to the wall fun for the player then Starfield or fallout.

Overall, I am a Bethesda fan, but I don`t see any reason they shouldn`t take the necessary steps to pull themselves up to a higher level. Nor should we not expect them to keep up modern to standards when it comes gameplay. Most studios are a round two thousand people now, and Bethesda is barely breaking a five-hundred. They are running on a skeleton crew and it shows, now more then ever they need to change, or be left to fail.

 

[None of your bee wax!]

Honestly I don't care that much, like most people will play a "good" character anyway, so it makes sense to have the writing team focus on this) and if they could give us a good story for those type of characters that would be nice, but they are only giving us mediocre stories at best. Like there is enough (or at least more than in most other games) stuff for evil characters via DB, Thieves Guild and daedric prince quests.

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Makes sense that most people will chose the good (or least neutral path), but having variations that differ slightly will keep new playthroughs fresh, and with how expensive games
are getting it won`t be long before the next games is a few hundred bucks. Though I agree that Bethesda has to keep their bread and butter customers happy, so fulfilling good choices being the most numerous and dedicated is the smart choice.

I don't think we will be seeing this since Starfield runs on their "new engine" (which seems to be the old engine in disguise from what people told me)

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Yea, I don`t think Bethesda will ever drop their Franken Gamebryo engine, as they seem content with the same twenty people who build everything for the past twenty-five years. It`s why I think ether Unreal 5 or Source 2 are the best bets as they have support (the last people who could update the engine left Crytek as CryEngine 6 still has source code roots with Bethesda`s custom Gamebryo engine), and dedicated training courses to get old developers up to par.

 

[Drak4806]

Skyrim was annoying in that you needed mods in order to actually be able to make use of destruction magic. Melee and bow attacks would scale off of weapon quality plus skill level while destruction spells didn't meaning that by leveling up you actually got weaker since enemies would get stronger while spell damage stayed the same.

 

[None of your bee wax!]

Skyrim was annoying in that you needed mods in order to actually be able to make use of destruction magic. Melee and bow attacks would scale off of weapon quality plus skill level while destruction spells didn't meaning that by leveling up you actually got weaker since enemies would get stronger while spell damage stayed the same.

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Hopefully Bethesda will copy what the Mechwarrior 5 team did, and just copy and paste data from the many nexus mods onto their main update package for Skyrim. Who knows, they might be able to course correct enough for ES6.

 

[gereh]

Makes sense that most people will chose the good (or least neutral path), but having variations that differ slightly will keep new playthroughs fresh, and with how expensive games are getting it won`t be long before the next games is a few hundred bucks. Though I agree that Bethesda has to keep their bread and butter customers happy, so fulfilling good choices being the most numerous and dedicated is the smart choice.

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Also something I forgot to mention is that if one is RP'ing an evil character you can often easily come up with (selfish) reason why you would stop a world ending event, like "yeah I'm an evil bastard worshiping the Daedra, but if Alduin takes over I can't have fun anymore so I will have to work with the blades to stop him". While a morally good character may not work with evil forces on principle, even if it would mean destroying a "bigger evil".

Skyrim was annoying in that you needed mods in order to actually be able to make use of destruction magic. Melee and bow attacks would scale off of weapon quality plus skill level while destruction spells didn't meaning that by leveling up you actually got weaker since enemies would get stronger while spell damage stayed the same.

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Most mods tend to overcompensate, because the whole problem wasn't nearly as bad as people made it out to be since Spells start with a higher base damage to begin with. It just looks bad in comparison to Weapons because Tempering is broken AF, meaning you can cruise through higher difficulty with a tempered weapon because the "deal only 25% damage" doesn't matter if you deal an infinite amount of damage anyway.

On the other hand with Enchanting + Alchemy Loop you can also reduce Spell cost to about 0 meaning you can cast Master Spells for free to deal a "metric fuckton of damage per second" anyway.

Also the problem of one type of damage falling off is a problem they had in all their games and it's seemingly not that easy to fix, at least I haven't seen anyone come up with a good way to do so yet.

 

[Nerevar]

Also you seem to want first person sandbox DnD, which is not and never has been what the Elder Scrolls was intended to be. And most of what you think you want would either feel awful to use or be far too clunky and awkward to actually be fun or use with a controller.

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For the record, that was explicitly stated as the goal for Daggerfall in its manual. They obviously couldn't achieve it, but they were trying for it back then, and even as incomplete and janky as it was even compared to later Bethesda games, that ambition still shows, and is what first endeared them to me. That same part of the manual included a plea not to try saving and reloading, but to instead play through any consequences short of death, because they'd created a system for having the game handle you failing missions and screwing up in other ways that wouldn't require you to keep reloading until you got your perfect outcome.

Them walking that ambition back over the years means I am no longer excited at the prospect of a new Elder Scrolls game. The complex faction reputation system in particular I still miss dearly. Even Morrowind, which I also love, was far less ambitious in many ways. It succeeded at more of the things it set out to do than Daggerfall did, which was a plus, but I would have liked to see an Elder Scrolls that had kept trying to make what Daggerfall was originally supposed to be.

Also, Daggerfall had a very simple solution to the problem Morrowind had with its percentage to hit chance issue so many people freaked out about. They didn't play the same goddamn whiff sound they use when you're swinging your weapons and not aiming at someone if you're pointing at a target and just missed your roll. They played a clashing or clanking sound of your weapon striking armor. It really was that simple to solve the player experience issue without removing to hit chances entirely. By using the same whiff sound, players didn't know the game even understood they were trying to hit the enemy, which led to the complaints and the developers abandoning to hit rolls entirely and redesigning combat as a concept to fix a problem that could be solved by tweaking the sound design using a solution they already used in their previous game.