Skyrim - What would you add?

[6_Qubed]

Definitely would like little Orcs, my Orc is married to an Orc but our two kids are Nords (I guess, or Americans) but I would happily punt them back to the orphanage if I could have two Orc kids... maybe I would like to actually father a child instead of adopting?

Also, if they could make home life more engaging I would like that.

Minecraft combat and Skyrim combat - so similar that it hurts. I love Minecraft but when it's combat is comparable to Skyrim then yeah, it needs improved. First person melee combat can be done (Riddick, Breakdown, Dark Messiah PC) but if it could make each weapon type feel unique and make our strikes feel weighty when they connect then YES

Dude, if I had the Two-Handed Sweep move in Minecraft I would be a very happy man.

OT: I'm fairly happy with Skyrim, even being an XBox fanboy such as I am, but the one thing that really bugs me is the marriage/family stuff, and most of Hearthfire. The housebuilding is mostly useful, but aesthetically godawful- the additions that actually match each other have little to no synergy with each other, meaning that if you want one house to be your primary base of operations, get ready to never be truly happy with it, especially if you want your family there.

Which brings me to my primary point. Hearthfire complaints aside, having a family feels less like having a family and more like a stat boost. This is all well and good if you're a munchkin, using the wife/husband to sell unwanted things, getting a food item, and then fucking off to the next dungeon crawl, but as a roleplayer it gives me fits. Shit, it'd be bearable if the option was there to just tell your spouse you love them. It wouldn't even be that hard, just modify some of the dialogue options to actually address the person you're speaking to. The best I can do is devote 0.3 lbs in my inventory to my wedding ring at all times, just for the sake of sentiment. There's something else, I guess; Having the ring either unenchanted, so I could throw something on it I'd use and wear it all the time, or have an enchantment on it that makes the case for wearing it at all times, like a spouse would.

Strangely relevant captcha: hallowed ground

Exactly! I carry my wedding round around, but never wear it and if only I had more things to say to my wife than: How much pocket money are you giving me today or MAKE ME PIE WOMAN

You forgot BUY MAH VENDER TRASH.

My poor, long-suffering Ysolda. She puts up with so much. Jewelry smelling of the grave, all manner of unsavory meats and pelts, various containers holding more things than they ought, two recently snagged-up orphans running around, a bedmate who's horrifying nightmares prevent either from getting a full night's restful sleep, the wandering draugr from the nearby crypt, that tone-deaf bard...

Oh! I touched on Skyrim mechanics in Minecraft, let's talk about Minecraft mechanics in Skyrim. I fully expected the Hearthfire buildings to be assembled bit by bit, not as modules. Son, I was disappoint. Granted, any house I built would most likelyend up being a giant cube because that's how I roll.

 

[loa]

Balance.
Sneaking is broken in so many ways, it's not even funny.
When it's not completely useless, it breaks the game with you becoming invisible by crouching, people right in front of you not seeing you in lit areas and you one-shotting dragons.
You can also pickpocket the money you give teachers for training back from them instantly turning this skill from entirely and utterly pointless to game breaking.
Then there is that illusion spell that basically kills entire floors of enemies by making everything in a 200 feet radius fight each other and enchantments that make you immune to everything and give you free spells.

There's so many bad and weird design choices, I could go on and on.

 

[Raddra]

A Dragon transformation shout that turns you back into a dragon for epic travel + maybe some combat utility until you use the shout again to turn it off. A lot of people forget that as the dragonborn you have a dragon soul. It would be fittingly epic to become a dragon again.

 

[Legion]

All NPC's should be killable like Fallout New Vegas. It severely limits role-playing options to have all of these characters have to live simply to keep their minor side-quests around. I want the ability to kill all of the bad guys, or if I am role-playing an assassin, the ability to kill anybody who I feel the need to for my story.

The Thieves Guild especially should be an option, or maybe even have a side quest that gives you option to set them up and have them imprisoned. As it is, playing a character who wants to uphold justice it is kind of jarring to not be able to do anything about a Thieves guild when you know who is a part of it and where they meet.

Better characters would be nice. As others have said, none of them even matter. Lydia for example has about two lines of dialogue and we have no reason to give a damn about anybody. Fallout wasn't the best in terms of characters, but I can think of at least a handful from the last two that I actually liked to keep alive. Hell, ED-E dying in Fallout New Vegas was more upsetting than any death in all of Skyrim.

Decisions need consequences. It's ultimately what stops me playing it again, that nothing matters because nobody reacts to anything properly. Sure, a dialogue line or two from passing guards, but that's it.

They also need to hurry the hell up and fix the vampire bugs.

 

[DalekJaas]

10 less days till Dragonborn's release.

 

[TheDoctor455]

Better characters (NPCs).

More guild quests (with each being more complex than what was already in-game).

More dynamic magic system (can't buy spells, only way to learn would be to either find old spell books in ruins, or learning from the Mage College)

Make the Bard College more interesting.


Pretty much everything I just listed has at least been attempted by modders already.

 

[Feylynn]

Acrobatics.
I will trade the Dragon Shouts, every school of magic in the game, the dragons themselves, the main story line, every thane quest group, smithing/enchanting/alchemy, and archery, speechcraft, half of the mod community, and elder scrolls online.

I will trade it all for a jump attack and the ability to jump while sprinting. That is all I EVER wanted out of Elder Scrolls.

Why did Skyrim forsake me?
=(

 

[KissmahArceus]

Elder Scrolls characters just lack something, maybe it's the voice acting, maybe it is the animation or maybe it's both?
My example would be the peace summit in the civil war, here you are in a room with Greybeards, Jarls and representitives of both sides of the war but it never feels dramatic or tense or engaging just..... flat

Better animation and voice acting could have made that scene as engaging as a Mass Effect scene but instead it just came across as exposition and crap.

There a few moments where it worked for me though, I enjoyed Isran's introduction in Dawnguard, his conversation with the dude that joined at the same time as you was nice.
And Paarthunax had a nice speech at The Throat of The World but nothing else springs to mind... and that sucks

 

[Hisshiss]

If you could add anything to Skyrim to improve the game, what would it be?
I've been playing an awful lot of Skyrim this week and have lost hours each night, wandering dank Dragr ruins, searching for Dragon Priest Masks and visiting towns, purchasing all the available corundum and iron (for nails and locks you see), and as much as I love the game, I'm no fool.

Skyrim would benefit from a few areas being improved, rough edges sanded out etc

The one thing that would improve the game immensely for me would be the Characters.
They have improved an awful lot since Oblivion but if the NPCs had more (way more) ambient dialog, didn't stop every time I walk by just to tell me "working at the fishery is hard, but it puts coin in my pocket" and had some more behaviours, I think the game world would feel so much more alive.

Plus I want more diseases - Oblivion had 30, Skyrim only has 8 - More diseases for Skyrim please!

I would redesign the perk point system a bit, bassicly take the exact amount of points required to max everything in a skills perk tree, and then award those points for skilling up in that tree instead of levelling up, then make them exclusive to that tree.

So instead of gaining perks by levelling up, you fill out 100% of the perks in a skill tree just by raising that skill to 100, so if you had the patience to max all 21, you could get every perk in the game. I would probly also nerf the rate of growth for skill levels themselves, pretty substantially, so as to make it require a pretty crazy grind to raise everything all at once, preserving some of the charm of specialization without actually capping players. I would probly also need to redo how the health/magicka/stam on level up works, since they dont give you enough of those to really sustain every kind of build, you obviously gotta commit, so that would probly need a flat buff, like 75% of what we get for one added to all each level automatically or something.

I know it cuts alot of the "Spirit" out of RPGs, but I just didnt enjoy having to specialize so much in skyrim, I would have preferred my character to be the sum of my efforts in certain places, as opposed to the sum of how I chose to spend my finite allowance.

 

[Auron225]

DLCs for the PS3? ;D

Alright alright. As some others have said, more varied side quests. It gets to the stage where I can picture my character just giving the quest giver a form to fill in;

Name:
Location of dungeon:
Thing to kill:
Item to retrieve:

Then at the botton, "I accept any form of payment, including random-arse equipment and items - because I am Skyrims only pushover murderer".

 

[Varrdy]

Definitely a major overhaul of how Bethesda writes characters, meaning they should actually have character for once. There isn´t a single NPC in the entire continent of Tamriel that I give a shit about. Not in any of the quest lines or otherwise. That has always been my only significant complaint with Bethesda.

I couldn't agree more! With some very notable exceptions (Three Dog from Fallout 3 to name but one), most Bethesda characters are so generic and boring. Sure they may have the odd hint of individuality but they are largely the same, just in different shoes. I suppose it's the price we pay for having so many NPC's.

The Mass Effect games had much better, deeper and individual characters and as a result, people got attached to them, hated them, loved them and any other number of emotional repsonses were felt, which means BioWare have got it and Bethesda hasn't.

I would also like to see the marriage element improved upon. Ysolda has already stopped making me a meal and it's pot-luck as to whether she will act as a merchant or not, depending on what mood the game is in. I'd like more options, including some "affection" animations. I'm not talking hardcore porn (I tried the sex mod but it kept locking up my PC) but some form of cutscene or animation that makes a spouse feel more like a loved one and less like a merchant who just happens to live in my house and call me "dear".

Linking the two points together, give potential spouses more background and personality and the chance to get to know them before making the choice. A seduction mechanic wouldn't have to be totally OTT but the current one (do a small favour and that's it) isn't very fulfilling. Sure the explanation for this is that people in Skyrim don't have time to fuck around and like to cut to the chase, which I can respect, but it just makes the marriage thing tacked-on, arbitary and un-fulfilling.

Someone else here also mentioned economy and I would like to touch on that as well. Apparently, towns will thrive if you spend lots of gold and go downhill if you keep robbing people of their stock / worldly goods but I don't see it, myself. Now Hearthfire has added a building mechanic, would it be so hard to adapt it so that different styles of house could be built and, if a town grows more prosperous, new houses be added and exisiting ones spruced up? If a town founders, show delapidation, more seedy types of people and a general feeling of malaise.

The only times I see a town change drastically are Whiterun and Solitude after the battles but, afterwards, why do they stay wrecked? The only attempt we see at repair is that guy who works for Belethor in Whiterun constantly naling the same decorative wall panel back into place, a task he repeats constantly until I got so fed up with the sound of his hammering that I slit his throat (Sneak at 100 and Backstab perk FTW!).

Lastly, I would re-do the female Khajiit voices. The male Khajiit voices all sound so smooth and suave; the aural equivalent of honey. The females sound like the female ghouls from Fallout 3 - a voice which is perfect for the latter but rather un-perfect for the former. I expected the female Khajiits to have a seductive purr to them, not a gutteral rasp that sounds like they have terminal hairballs!

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I'd probably make the combat system more Dark Souls like. Not as hard, but with the same system, because run up and just swing your sword until the guys fall down isn't the best. Heck, when I think about it, fighting in Minecraft was more tense than Skyrim.

Yep. Even if it meant locking melee combat to third person (they'd have to tighten up the third person movement, still feels too floaty) I'd be cool with it if it improved the combat significantly.

I'd like to see the NPCs become real people rather than glazed-eyed morons, with actual facial expressions. That kinda thing.

If they're planning on doing any very large DLCs, I think now would be a good opportunity to do Valenwood. It's small so it could reasonably go in a DLC, and there's lots going on there at the same time as Skyrim. The Thalmor are invading, cutting down the woods to build fleets, recruiting Maormer pirates and raiders... so a quest line to conjure a Wild Hunt and expel the invaders would be extremely cool. I'd like to see some savage wood elves, with bones braided into their hair and clothes made from rough skins, ie traditional elves that have never seen civilisation.

 

[AgentLampshade]

A new race. I know it would break the lore and all that, but I want a new race that looks and plays differently, like a monkey race that lessens the damage from high falls or something.

 

[Cale Lively]

Flip the dragon born and civil war quest. Lets be honest civil war WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more interesting of a story line. Further more you could have had much more fun. Imagine lifting Sieges on friendly towns the various ways you could do it, or taking a town, do you do it by force, by stealth, or by wealth? Also having Thane actually mean something? Life with the home and hearth how about you ow the land and Tax it...have a village.

 

[Julianna Whitehead]

Rideable dragons, that YOU control. What is the point of riding a dragon if the AI of the dragon takes over for movement?

I SO agree. And it wouldn't have been hard to add it in, but it seems they took the whole flying part (including just hovering) out of the picture since Oblivion. It wouldn't have been hard to add flying on a dragon in, though they probably would have used it like a fast travel option with a little video clip of you traveling on it in the air. Since it seems like so much of the game's coding room was used up in making the game seem more real with graphics and wildlife variables.

 

[Tdoodle]

In Skyrim however, the majority of the quests seem to have been simplified to "Go into dungeon and kill shit".

Pretty much every quest you mentioned boils down to "Go somewhere, kill stuff/take something".

OT: Pretty basic thing, but new animations for weapons as you level up/add perks. I liked what they had in Oblivion, where as you hit 25/50/75/100 you'd get new power attack animations to reflect your skills. They'd have a chance of doing something too, I think knocking someone down was one and disarming them another. Yeah, I'd bring those back.

Not sure how bothered I am about attributes and classes people have been banging on about since pre-release, the new system fits better with the whole "get better at what you do" thing that the Elder Scrolls has always gone for.

 

[spartandude]

...total conversion mod to a D20 system (maybe Pathfinder, that's popular these days)... actually, that's it. It would be a huge undertaking...

in that case it would just be better to get a D20 based games and mod that to have Skyrim as the map

 

[BaronWasteland]

Goblins. I love goblins. Also, a more involved romance system, and more illusion spells.

 

[SajuukKhar]

OT: Pretty basic thing, but new animations for weapons as you level up/add perks. I liked what they had in Oblivion, where as you hit 25/50/75/100 you'd get new power attack animations to reflect your skills. They'd have a chance of doing something too, I think knocking someone down was one and disarming them another. Yeah, I'd bring those back.

Those already exist in the game.

In Oblivion, you got new directional power attacks as you leveled up your skill, with every weapon having the same power attacks, in Skyrim, those same power attacks, or at least variation of them, exist as perks in the one-handed, and two-handed, skill trees.