By being Skyrim but with a MULTI PLAYER option at the log in screen. In fact, you don't even need to create a new game, just patch Skyrim with the damn multi player option and be done with it. Or release a new Skyrim Expansion with multi player and watch the millions and millions of $$$ pouring in. They're sitting on a gold mine but keep working on crappy TESO. The modding community for Skyrim are doing a way better job at keeping Skyrim fresh than Bethesda / Zen are doing with TESO. TESO was a mistake since the start with SKYRIM still being the overwhelming #1 Elder Scrolls of all time, even to this day. People on these forums for a few years, including myself if not banned 20 times in between, have said TESO should have never happened and Skyrim should have been more worked on instead. And to think of it, we don't even need Bethesda to patch Skyrim, the modders are doing a great job at working on the multi player mod that is still pretty much in alpha stages but it is working to a certain degree, so just a matter of time 'til it goes full throttle.
First off, the game engine has to go. It's a tired old horse that has broken its leg and is hundreds of miles away from the nearest vet. They need to give this game engine a mercy killing and either start developing a whole new one (bad idea) or start paying for rights to use one of the half dozen tried and tested game engines already running dozens of games.
This games engine is so dated at this point that I will probably just skip the next Bethesda game entirely if they keep trying to use it.
Second is the games AI. For years gaming companies used to brag how much they had improved their AI. The NPC's in this game react to your actions! They are smarter than in any game before! F.E.A.R. was the last game that I can remember that made large progress in their AI model. Since then, most companies are still using that model, or even worse models from an earlier time.
Third, is there needs to be a way for me to play the game without having to become a master of every craft. I really don't want every character I create to have to become a master blacksmith and master alchemist in order to play the game. Give me other options such as taking materials to a blacksmith and have him make things for me.
Fourth, if there are settlements in the next ES game, then don't force it on us. Just because I show up somewhere and help a settler with a quest does not mean I want to run that town forever. Make them optional without making us feel like dirty scumbags if we don't babysit every town we come across. Managing settlements became a tedious full time job in Fallout 4 after about a month and I started wishing I hadn't built up and populated so many places.
For starters,how about not looking like absolute sh!t without 60 graphics mods,and ini files and all that bs which end up taking more time than the actual gaming? See which are the top GFX ,weather,and ambience mods the community is using and make the next ES game to look (and sound) like this out of the box. Better physics. A new UI.Send the current one back to the 80s where it belongs. More solid,bug resistant scripting. Even larger map. More engaging and dynamic combat wouldn't hurt. Better enemy AI. Follower AI.(Get rid of the followers AS(for stupidity ofc). Multiple followers. Mounted combat. Other than that there's not much more to ask.I know it'll be an epic open ended world full or great stories and lore,and I know I'll make it my in game life's purpose to cause maximum destruction and pain to it's inhabitants,chickens included.
Bring back classes, and make them matter. No more of this being a master of everything bullshit. If you go a warrior route, expect your spellcasting and rogue abilities to be mediocre at best unless you put a massive amount of time into the game. Give us gameplay options related to this choice. A thief can pick the lock on a chest. A warrior can smash and grab at the risk of destroying some of the loot inside. A mage has a variety of options depend on their specialization (which they will be encourage to pick).
Go back to text conversations, and make race, gender, and faction affiliation matter. It's rather stupid that one character can be the leader of the Companions, the leader of the mage's guild, the leader of the Dark Brotherhood, and so on. If I'm playing a nord, I expect the Thalmor to treat me like a particularly dim child. Likewise, if I'm playing an altmer, I expect those same Thalmor to treat my character with considerably more warmth and actively try to recruit me to their cause.
To facilitate this, you'll have to ditch the voiceovers (though you may be able to keep them for the main quest line). While they're nice to have, they're simply not feasible with the above.
Give the gameplay systems depth. Allow us to allocate stats. Give us a perk system with more depth. Give us combat style and spell crafting. Allow bards to earn coin as entertainers and allow them to be bards in something besides name. Add a more sophisticated lockpicking and trap disabling system. Add puzzles that can't be solved by most four-year olds.
Pay attention to cream of the crop mods for Skyrim. While I like Oblivion and Morrowind more than Skyrim, the thing that keeps me coming back to Skyrim over the other two is the mods. Some of the mods are simply fantastic and should have been built into Skyrim already (such as anything by Chesko - Campfire/Frostfall/Simply Knock). Others like Winter Is Coming/Cloaks of Skyrim, Interesting NPCs, Immersive Armors/Weapons/Creatures/College of Winterhold are a great showcase for ways of improving the game. Oh, and Revenge of the Enemies. It makes the default enemies in Skyrim just seem silly.
By being Skyrim but with a MULTI PLAYER option at the log in screen. In fact, you don't even need to create a new game, just patch Skyrim with the damn multi player option and be done with it.
They would have to redo their entire mod system from the ground up in order to make this feasible.
Third, is there needs to be a way for me to play the game without having to become a master of every craft. I really don't want every character I create to have to become a master blacksmith and master alchemist in order to play the game. Give me other options such as taking materials to a blacksmith and have him make things for me.
Fourth, if there are settlements in the next ES game, then don't force it on us. Just because I show up somewhere and help a settler with a quest does not mean I want to run that town forever. Make them optional without making us feel like dirty scumbags if we don't babysit every town we come across. Managing settlements became a tedious full time job in Fallout 4 after about a month and I started wishing I hadn't built up and populated so many places.
I think third and fourth are all you.
You absolutely don't have to ever master all the crafts or any crafts for that matter.
I never did any crafting in Morrowind. Didn't do any crafting in Oblivion and I have a 60+ character in Skyrim that only has a little bit of smithing.
As far as settlements, do you really have to manage them? I suspect this is more like #3.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Third, is there needs to be a way for me to play the game without having to become a master of every craft. I really don't want every character I create to have to become a master blacksmith and master alchemist in order to play the game. Give me other options such as taking materials to a blacksmith and have him make things for me.
Fourth, if there are settlements in the next ES game, then don't force it on us. Just because I show up somewhere and help a settler with a quest does not mean I want to run that town forever. Make them optional without making us feel like dirty scumbags if we don't babysit every town we come across. Managing settlements became a tedious full time job in Fallout 4 after about a month and I started wishing I hadn't built up and populated so many places.
I think third and fourth are all you.
You absolutely DON'T have to ever master all the crafts or any crafts for that matter.
I never did any crafting in Morrowind. Didn't do any crafting in Oblivion and I have a 60+ character in Skyrim that only has a little bit of smithing.
As far as settlements, do you really have to manage them? I suspect this is more like #3.
One thing that would be really nice IMO is to be able to use your characters you make as companions and or allow transfer of things across characters so even if the multi-player were never implemented at least we could build on other charcters skills.
1. High Fantasy Setting This may be a bit controversial, but I feel the Elder Scrolls games have steadily gotten worse over time in terms of setting. Skyrim was just northern Europe in winter, whilst Oblivion was just medieval Europe. We've seen it all before, it's boring.
Bring back high fantasy setting like Morrowind. I want to be amazed by the world im in, not bored. I want exploration to be a key driver. In Skyrim, I just gave up in the end. Everywhere pretty much looked the same with minimal variety. Not like the deserts / jungles / marshes / mushroom houses / mountains etc of Morrowind.
2. Improved Combat Combat has always been the weakest part of the Elder Scrolls series. It is almost entirely stat based with very little player skill involved. I'm not quite sure what the best style would be but almost anything would be better.
3. Removing Content Scaling Morrowind had no scaling. Oblivion and Skyrim did and it killed so much of the game for me. I remember one play through of Oblivion, I managed to complete the game before level 5 which meant everything was super low-level, basically never saw any daedra apart from scamps. Never looted any high level armour or weapons. There was no sense of achievement. Another playthrough, I gamed the system so that I was lvl 25 before I started any quests, resulting in a much more interesting experience, but still not dangerous.
Remove the scaling to give a sense of danger and adventure. I love finding places with much higher level mobs. Its fun trying to complete it early, then it becomes rewarding to revisit later and complete it if you failed first time around.
4. Add Sandbox Features Many people refer to the elder scrolls as a sandbox, but its not. Almost all the content is scripted themepark content (quests, guilds etc), its just set in an open world where leveling isn't tied directly to questing.
I'd like to see sandbox features added. For example, ability to build your own house, expand and grow it, attract other settlers, expand into a village / town etc. Perhaps add something similar to GTA San Andreas' territory control: say you join a guild or become master of a guild, add ability to really manage it, set your follower quests, aim to take over territory etc.
5. Make dungeons interesting Skyrim's dungeons sucked. Hard. There was so little variety I was shocked. There were basically natural caves, worked caves or dwemnor ruins. They were straight forwards and boring.
6. Sort Out The Loot! In Morrowind, everything I wore was looted. The best items in game were looted, often from very random places. This was an added incentive to explore everything you ever came across. Oblivion wasn't too bad but the variety of looted items decreased and once you'd mastered mages guild, you just enchanted everything yourself. In Skyrim, even just casually crafting meant that very quickly your crafted gear was better than anything looted. Usually within 10-15 hours of a new game of skyrim, I'd basically be unkillable due to crafted gear, so I'd have to force myself to wear shit gear to increase challenge.
7. Interface Bethesda have usually sucked with their interfaces, so everyone ends up using mods to sort it. Lets get it correct the first time round please!
I thought that Skyrim set the bar for animations pretty low and didn't expect ESO to produce something worse...hope that next Elder Scrolls game will be better in that regard than the two.
More interactions between faction storyarcs. In Skyrim there was almost zero effect when you are in one faction (companions for example), and you attempt the storyarc of another faction. This was done slightly better in Fallout 4 but in FO4 there are less factions (4 vs Skyrim's 7). So while there is some interaction between factions in FO4, it was limited by the number of factions the game has. In the next Elder Scrolls game it would be quite awesome if faction storyarcs are intertwined and would change according to your affiliation with the different factions.
Ummmm, the next Elder Scrolls game is out... It's called Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited and it's an MMORPG so it's hard to say if it's a straight up improvement since it's a vastly different style of game.
Oh please tell me my answer made you have feelings *evil laughter ensues*
Ummmm, the next Elder Scrolls game is out... It's called Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited and it's an MMORPG so it's hard to say if it's a straight up improvement since it's a vastly different style of game.
Oh please tell me my answer made you have feelings *evil laughter ensues*
I highly doubt I'm the only person here who doesn't consider TESO an Elder Scrolls game.
The best thing they can do for the next Elder Scrolls title is make less cookie-cutter content. Skyrim got to a point where you had done everything and encountered every scenario even though you probably had 100+ hours of content left. What the OP said about dungeons I can agree with, as it follows my logic of reducing cookie-cutter built dungeons. I would just like to see more variety.
Less frequent combat and more engaging combat. One of my favorite parts of Oblivion was the Arena, because you had to fight a variety of enemies of varying difficulty and it was in the middle of city. Combat is fun, but 90% of the living beings you encounter outside of city walls try to murder you, the game just seems like one combat situation after another. I would like to see more story and more interaction. If I can talk to bandits, and maybe talk my way into their group with cunning and charisma, why not add that gameplay?
Wolves that do not attack, but scamper away unless in a pack.
Let me cast magic with my shield on, like in Oblivion. The magic in hands destroyed my Paladin build from Oblivion with my Shield + Sword and healing magic.
I would expect the next Elder Scrolls game to be the single player sucessor.
Single player. So not an "mmo" - that is ESO; (probably) not co-op - that is ESO; VR - not mass market feature yet so no big deal either way.
And given Skyrim's sales we should expect more of the same: master of everything - check and this is the way things have moved; level scaling - present again the way things have moved; combat - yes because that substitutes for content and so on. I would even expect a Thieve's Guild DLC and a Dark Brotherhood DLC.
Bottomline: it doesn't need to be "innovative" as long as it does "more of the same" and does it "well".
What Bethseda have had to decide is how much "non-cookie cooker content" there needs to be and the ratio of original content to cookie cutter. For this is what ES games have traditionally done. Taken "some content" and then "replicated it" to create the illusion of a "massive game" allowing you to play for "hundreds of hours". All for a single purchase B2P price. No 20+ months @ $15 that buys you a single content patch!
Could it improve? Absolutely in areas like bugs. Having to enter a script command to advance a quest ... not one of Skyrim's bright spots. If all it does is more of the same though - that would be somewhat sad but not a disaster.
Comments
LOL sorry to burst your bubble but that would fail already beings it OW FFA
OH shit! lol. wait. I think they did already.
If you are interested in making a MMO maybe visit my page to get a free open source engine.
This games engine is so dated at this point that I will probably just skip the next Bethesda game entirely if they keep trying to use it.
Second is the games AI. For years gaming companies used to brag how much they had improved their AI. The NPC's in this game react to your actions! They are smarter than in any game before! F.E.A.R. was the last game that I can remember that made large progress in their AI model. Since then, most companies are still using that model, or even worse models from an earlier time.
Third, is there needs to be a way for me to play the game without having to become a master of every craft. I really don't want every character I create to have to become a master blacksmith and master alchemist in order to play the game. Give me other options such as taking materials to a blacksmith and have him make things for me.
Fourth, if there are settlements in the next ES game, then don't force it on us. Just because I show up somewhere and help a settler with a quest does not mean I want to run that town forever. Make them optional without making us feel like dirty scumbags if we don't babysit every town we come across. Managing settlements became a tedious full time job in Fallout 4 after about a month and I started wishing I hadn't built up and populated so many places.
See which are the top GFX ,weather,and ambience mods the community is using and make the next ES game to look (and sound) like this out of the box.
Better physics.
A new UI.Send the current one back to the 80s where it belongs.
More solid,bug resistant scripting.
Even larger map.
More engaging and dynamic combat wouldn't hurt.
Better enemy AI.
Follower AI.(Get rid of the followers AS(for stupidity ofc).
Multiple followers.
Mounted combat.
Other than that there's not much more to ask.I know it'll be an epic open ended world full or great stories and lore,and I know I'll make it my in game life's purpose to cause maximum destruction and pain to it's inhabitants,chickens included.
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
Bring back classes, and make them matter.
No more of this being a master of everything bullshit. If you go a warrior route, expect your spellcasting and rogue abilities to be mediocre at best unless you put a massive amount of time into the game. Give us gameplay options related to this choice. A thief can pick the lock on a chest. A warrior can smash and grab at the risk of destroying some of the loot inside. A mage has a variety of options depend on their specialization (which they will be encourage to pick).
Go back to text conversations, and make race, gender, and faction affiliation matter.
It's rather stupid that one character can be the leader of the Companions, the leader of the mage's guild, the leader of the Dark Brotherhood, and so on. If I'm playing a nord, I expect the Thalmor to treat me like a particularly dim child. Likewise, if I'm playing an altmer, I expect those same Thalmor to treat my character with considerably more warmth and actively try to recruit me to their cause.
To facilitate this, you'll have to ditch the voiceovers (though you may be able to keep them for the main quest line). While they're nice to have, they're simply not feasible with the above.
Give the gameplay systems depth.
Allow us to allocate stats. Give us a perk system with more depth. Give us combat style and spell crafting. Allow bards to earn coin as entertainers and allow them to be bards in something besides name. Add a more sophisticated lockpicking and trap disabling system. Add puzzles that can't be solved by most four-year olds.
Pay attention to cream of the crop mods for Skyrim.
While I like Oblivion and Morrowind more than Skyrim, the thing that keeps me coming back to Skyrim over the other two is the mods. Some of the mods are simply fantastic and should have been built into Skyrim already (such as anything by Chesko - Campfire/Frostfall/Simply Knock). Others like Winter Is Coming/Cloaks of Skyrim, Interesting NPCs, Immersive Armors/Weapons/Creatures/College of Winterhold are a great showcase for ways of improving the game. Oh, and Revenge of the Enemies. It makes the default enemies in Skyrim just seem silly.
You absolutely don't have to ever master all the crafts or any crafts for that matter.
I never did any crafting in Morrowind. Didn't do any crafting in Oblivion and I have a 60+ character in Skyrim that only has a little bit of smithing.
As far as settlements, do you really have to manage them? I suspect this is more like #3.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Do we know if they are working on one?
Seaspite
Playing ESO on my X-Box
If you are interested in making a MMO maybe visit my page to get a free open source engine.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
This may be a bit controversial, but I feel the Elder Scrolls games have steadily gotten worse over time in terms of setting. Skyrim was just northern Europe in winter, whilst Oblivion was just medieval Europe. We've seen it all before, it's boring.
Bring back high fantasy setting like Morrowind. I want to be amazed by the world im in, not bored. I want exploration to be a key driver. In Skyrim, I just gave up in the end. Everywhere pretty much looked the same with minimal variety. Not like the deserts / jungles / marshes / mushroom houses / mountains etc of Morrowind.
2. Improved Combat
Combat has always been the weakest part of the Elder Scrolls series. It is almost entirely stat based with very little player skill involved. I'm not quite sure what the best style would be but almost anything would be better.
3. Removing Content Scaling
Morrowind had no scaling. Oblivion and Skyrim did and it killed so much of the game for me. I remember one play through of Oblivion, I managed to complete the game before level 5 which meant everything was super low-level, basically never saw any daedra apart from scamps. Never looted any high level armour or weapons. There was no sense of achievement. Another playthrough, I gamed the system so that I was lvl 25 before I started any quests, resulting in a much more interesting experience, but still not dangerous.
Remove the scaling to give a sense of danger and adventure. I love finding places with much higher level mobs. Its fun trying to complete it early, then it becomes rewarding to revisit later and complete it if you failed first time around.
4. Add Sandbox Features
Many people refer to the elder scrolls as a sandbox, but its not. Almost all the content is scripted themepark content (quests, guilds etc), its just set in an open world where leveling isn't tied directly to questing.
I'd like to see sandbox features added. For example, ability to build your own house, expand and grow it, attract other settlers, expand into a village / town etc. Perhaps add something similar to GTA San Andreas' territory control: say you join a guild or become master of a guild, add ability to really manage it, set your follower quests, aim to take over territory etc.
5. Make dungeons interesting
Skyrim's dungeons sucked. Hard. There was so little variety I was shocked. There were basically natural caves, worked caves or dwemnor ruins. They were straight forwards and boring.
6. Sort Out The Loot!
In Morrowind, everything I wore was looted. The best items in game were looted, often from very random places. This was an added incentive to explore everything you ever came across. Oblivion wasn't too bad but the variety of looted items decreased and once you'd mastered mages guild, you just enchanted everything yourself. In Skyrim, even just casually crafting meant that very quickly your crafted gear was better than anything looted. Usually within 10-15 hours of a new game of skyrim, I'd basically be unkillable due to crafted gear, so I'd have to force myself to wear shit gear to increase challenge.
7. Interface
Bethesda have usually sucked with their interfaces, so everyone ends up using mods to sort it. Lets get it correct the first time round please!
In other words...all those empty castles? I want to own them
make it multiplayer and then THAT is what I would call ESO
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I remember finding an awesome dungeon that had a dragon bone breastplate. It was totally unexpected.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Ummmm, the next Elder Scrolls game is out... It's called Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited and it's an MMORPG so it's hard to say if it's a straight up improvement since it's a vastly different style of game.
Oh please tell me my answer made you have feelings
*evil laughter ensues*
I highly doubt I'm the only person here who doesn't consider TESO an Elder Scrolls game.
Less frequent combat and more engaging combat. One of my favorite parts of Oblivion was the Arena, because you had to fight a variety of enemies of varying difficulty and it was in the middle of city. Combat is fun, but 90% of the living beings you encounter outside of city walls try to murder you, the game just seems like one combat situation after another. I would like to see more story and more interaction. If I can talk to bandits, and maybe talk my way into their group with cunning and charisma, why not add that gameplay?
Wolves that do not attack, but scamper away unless in a pack.
Let me cast magic with my shield on, like in Oblivion. The magic in hands destroyed my Paladin build from Oblivion with my Shield + Sword and healing magic.
Better stealth AI.
The list could go on...
Single player. So not an "mmo" - that is ESO; (probably) not co-op - that is ESO; VR - not mass market feature yet so no big deal either way.
And given Skyrim's sales we should expect more of the same: master of everything - check and this is the way things have moved; level scaling - present again the way things have moved; combat - yes because that substitutes for content and so on. I would even expect a Thieve's Guild DLC and a Dark Brotherhood DLC.
Bottomline: it doesn't need to be "innovative" as long as it does "more of the same" and does it "well".
What Bethseda have had to decide is how much "non-cookie cooker content" there needs to be and the ratio of original content to cookie cutter. For this is what ES games have traditionally done. Taken "some content" and then "replicated it" to create the illusion of a "massive game" allowing you to play for "hundreds of hours". All for a single purchase B2P price. No 20+ months @ $15 that buys you a single content patch!
Could it improve? Absolutely in areas like bugs. Having to enter a script command to advance a quest ... not one of Skyrim's bright spots. If all it does is more of the same though - that would be somewhat sad but not a disaster.