Simple question, do you want Vampires and/or Werewolves (with the player able to become one of course, personally I'd prefer it if you could be both) in Skyrim or not, and if so, how would you like them to be? Possibly even something entirely different from either, Explain your decision below.
For those that are interested, I have mine below:
Personally, I'd choose option 6, there several things I liked about being a Vampire and Werewolf, but several things I would change.
For the vampires, I definitely would change things appearance-wise, I really didn't like the fact that your skin/scales/fur reset to the default when you became one or even liked the eyes all that much, especially when it came to the beast races, I really hated the look of the human-like pinkish eyes on the Argonian, but I haven't played the Khajit yet, but even on the human characters they didn't look particularly menacing or monsterous. Also, I didn't like the aging effect either, you age about 50 years after changing. You could go from a young vibrant 18 year old to a wizened 60 year old in a day. I agree there should be some effect to you when you change, but aging should not be one of them, and/or if it is, have it be minimal, like about 10 years instead. If I wanted a default skinned 60 year old character, I would have created them as such.
The eyes should look a lot more monsterous and evil looking too, even if you aren't monsterous or evil, you are cursed after all. For instance, the eyes being completely black except for the pupils which would be red T-Rex style/cat-like, and the entire eye especially the pupil glowing a bit, flipping the colors would work too. This would look VERY creepy on a human especially, on a Argonian less so, though this would have to mean that NPCs either would not notice this (which wouldn't be too far-fetched, after all no one ever notices the pink humanlike eyes on an Argonian in Oblivion) or that Skyrim society wouldn't care much about vampires as long as they didn't do anything evil, or even have a Guild or something where they have a place in Skyrim society, even if it was a underworld "open secret" society kind of like the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood.
Oh, and the fangs especially on a player vampire should be obvious (and longer ones on races that ALWAYS have fangs) even with their mouths closed, in Oblivion without the eyes you wouldn't be able to tell your character was a vampire, even at max hunger because they didn't really have fangs that could be seen when their mouths where closed, even a little, and your player character's mouth is pretty much alway closed when you're actually able to see them.
Oh, and the attribute bonuses you get as a vampire should increase how much your attributes can improve by the same amount, so you don't have to max your attributes out before becoming a Vampire in order to benefit from them.
Werewolves could use a pretty big overhaul, your skills and attributes that you have as normal should be as high or higher when you are a werewolf, and/or you should be able to increase them while being a werewolf, especially if they're lower as as a werewolf, and there should be a boost to your own abilites when normal as well.
Also, since you have to kill people every night as a werewolf, they should make generic NPCs like bandits restorable so you'll always have victims, and hunting and killing people as a werewolf should be more interesting. They should make hunting people much like an animal would, but not exclude how a person would either. For example, you would be able to stalk them, mess with their heads, cause them to panic, lay simple traps, etc. basically have fun killing your victims. Also, when you kill your victim there should be several finishing animations for both head-on combat and stealth killing, and several devour your victims animations too, not to mention being able to do more than just swipe at people with your claws, such as leap on them as start trying to rip out their throats. All this would make killing people and general combat as a werewolf much more entertaining and keep it from becoming tedious.
Next, You should either be able to wear all of your equipment while a werewolf even if it was invisible, so it can effect your attack and defense scores, or make the hand-to-hand (which I hear there isn't going to be, which is definite negative especially if werewolves are going to be in the game) and unarmored skills at maximum as good as top tier equipment, and the game should just automatically reequip the equipment you had on when you turn back to normal
As for the appearance, the race and gender you are before becoming a werewolf should affect your appearence as a werewolf in some way, for instance orcs would be more muscular, have longer and sharper looking teeth as a werewolf, a slight green hue to your fur, etc. Basically if your race has a particular characteristic that is unique to your race alone, it should be there as a werewolf, you should be able to look at a werewolf and at least vaguely tell what race it came from and what gender it is (without getting pornographic of course). This would prevent a bunch of generic looking werewolves that all look the same, including your player character like it was in Morrowind. This would probably cause complications if you were a Vampire/Werewolf hybrid, but I doubt they're insurmountable.
This one's for both of them, there should be pieces of equipment like a ring or amulet and/or toggleable spells that gives a permanent effect that stops the need to kill people while a werewolf or drink blood to prevent sun damage as a vampire, and for the werewolf the ability to change at will and not have to change at night at all without actually being truly cured.
Killing people, transforming, drinking blood, or putting Hircine's ring on every day to stay a werewolf 24 hours is fun at first, but it eventually becomes boring and annoying. I know what you're thinking, "so why not just get cured?" it's because in order to keep the attribute bonuses as a Vampire or to staying permanently transformed a Werewolf you have to keep doing these things, and once you DO get cured there's no getting cursed again without mods or console commands.
Of course, these pieces of equipment and/or spells should be VERY difficult to obtain, and you'd have to already be a Vampire and/or Werewolf in order to get it, so practically everybody wouldn't immediately just get these things and take all the disadvantages of being cursed out without hardly trying, they should be things that any one of which would take probably a Guide and hours and hours of gametime to get, so only people that are REALLY bored and annoyed with these disadvantages would bother to get them.
Well, that's all I can think of for the moment, what do you guys think? I would really enjoy hearing about what you would change about Vampires and Werewolves and especially some other curses everybody would come up with.
For those that are interested, I have mine below:
Personally, I'd choose option 6, there several things I liked about being a Vampire and Werewolf, but several things I would change.
For the vampires, I definitely would change things appearance-wise, I really didn't like the fact that your skin/scales/fur reset to the default when you became one or even liked the eyes all that much, especially when it came to the beast races, I really hated the look of the human-like pinkish eyes on the Argonian, but I haven't played the Khajit yet, but even on the human characters they didn't look particularly menacing or monsterous. Also, I didn't like the aging effect either, you age about 50 years after changing. You could go from a young vibrant 18 year old to a wizened 60 year old in a day. I agree there should be some effect to you when you change, but aging should not be one of them, and/or if it is, have it be minimal, like about 10 years instead. If I wanted a default skinned 60 year old character, I would have created them as such.
The eyes should look a lot more monsterous and evil looking too, even if you aren't monsterous or evil, you are cursed after all. For instance, the eyes being completely black except for the pupils which would be red T-Rex style/cat-like, and the entire eye especially the pupil glowing a bit, flipping the colors would work too. This would look VERY creepy on a human especially, on a Argonian less so, though this would have to mean that NPCs either would not notice this (which wouldn't be too far-fetched, after all no one ever notices the pink humanlike eyes on an Argonian in Oblivion) or that Skyrim society wouldn't care much about vampires as long as they didn't do anything evil, or even have a Guild or something where they have a place in Skyrim society, even if it was a underworld "open secret" society kind of like the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood.
Oh, and the fangs especially on a player vampire should be obvious (and longer ones on races that ALWAYS have fangs) even with their mouths closed, in Oblivion without the eyes you wouldn't be able to tell your character was a vampire, even at max hunger because they didn't really have fangs that could be seen when their mouths where closed, even a little, and your player character's mouth is pretty much alway closed when you're actually able to see them.
Oh, and the attribute bonuses you get as a vampire should increase how much your attributes can improve by the same amount, so you don't have to max your attributes out before becoming a Vampire in order to benefit from them.
Werewolves could use a pretty big overhaul, your skills and attributes that you have as normal should be as high or higher when you are a werewolf, and/or you should be able to increase them while being a werewolf, especially if they're lower as as a werewolf, and there should be a boost to your own abilites when normal as well.
Also, since you have to kill people every night as a werewolf, they should make generic NPCs like bandits restorable so you'll always have victims, and hunting and killing people as a werewolf should be more interesting. They should make hunting people much like an animal would, but not exclude how a person would either. For example, you would be able to stalk them, mess with their heads, cause them to panic, lay simple traps, etc. basically have fun killing your victims. Also, when you kill your victim there should be several finishing animations for both head-on combat and stealth killing, and several devour your victims animations too, not to mention being able to do more than just swipe at people with your claws, such as leap on them as start trying to rip out their throats. All this would make killing people and general combat as a werewolf much more entertaining and keep it from becoming tedious.
Next, You should either be able to wear all of your equipment while a werewolf even if it was invisible, so it can effect your attack and defense scores, or make the hand-to-hand (which I hear there isn't going to be, which is definite negative especially if werewolves are going to be in the game) and unarmored skills at maximum as good as top tier equipment, and the game should just automatically reequip the equipment you had on when you turn back to normal
As for the appearance, the race and gender you are before becoming a werewolf should affect your appearence as a werewolf in some way, for instance orcs would be more muscular, have longer and sharper looking teeth as a werewolf, a slight green hue to your fur, etc. Basically if your race has a particular characteristic that is unique to your race alone, it should be there as a werewolf, you should be able to look at a werewolf and at least vaguely tell what race it came from and what gender it is (without getting pornographic of course). This would prevent a bunch of generic looking werewolves that all look the same, including your player character like it was in Morrowind. This would probably cause complications if you were a Vampire/Werewolf hybrid, but I doubt they're insurmountable.
This one's for both of them, there should be pieces of equipment like a ring or amulet and/or toggleable spells that gives a permanent effect that stops the need to kill people while a werewolf or drink blood to prevent sun damage as a vampire, and for the werewolf the ability to change at will and not have to change at night at all without actually being truly cured.
Killing people, transforming, drinking blood, or putting Hircine's ring on every day to stay a werewolf 24 hours is fun at first, but it eventually becomes boring and annoying. I know what you're thinking, "so why not just get cured?" it's because in order to keep the attribute bonuses as a Vampire or to staying permanently transformed a Werewolf you have to keep doing these things, and once you DO get cured there's no getting cursed again without mods or console commands.
Of course, these pieces of equipment and/or spells should be VERY difficult to obtain, and you'd have to already be a Vampire and/or Werewolf in order to get it, so practically everybody wouldn't immediately just get these things and take all the disadvantages of being cursed out without hardly trying, they should be things that any one of which would take probably a Guide and hours and hours of gametime to get, so only people that are REALLY bored and annoyed with these disadvantages would bother to get them.
Well, that's all I can think of for the moment, what do you guys think? I would really enjoy hearing about what you would change about Vampires and Werewolves and especially some other curses everybody would come up with.
