The Elder Scroll's series.

[BloatedGuppy]

Would you sacrifice the FPS aspect for The Elder Scrolls to improve combat?

Step 1: Call up the people who made Mount & Blade or Chivalry
Step 2: Pay them cash money to port their combat into your Elder Scrolls Game
Step 3: Collect GOTY award
Step 4: Buy a busload of cocaine with your royalty check
Step 5: Check into rehab clinic
Step 6: Give emotional interview with popular online blogger about how you're turning your life around
Step 7: Start own studio
Step 8: Release spiritual successor to cherished indie property to wild acclaim
Step 9: Get bloated ego, give cock-eyed speech about "re-inventing the medium"
Step 10: Repeat steps 4 through 9

 

[Doom972]

First of all, They're not FPS RPGs because except for being in first person, they don't have much to do with first person shooters. These games are action RPGs that can be played both in the first and third person perspectives. Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim can be played on third person, though I would admit that it doesn't work very well in Morrowind if you want to use ranged weapons and spells.

As for the combat system - it's good enough. I would welcome improvement, but not at the price of not being able to play properly in first person. I play these games more for the sake of immersion and exploration rather than challenge, so that sacrifice wouldn't be worth it in my opinion.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

I've never felt that combat was the "point" of the Elder Scrolls games but I can't argue that it definitely needs some work. Maybe not quite to the level of Dark Souls, which is far too realistic for something like The Elder Scrolls in my opinion, but something more engaging is definitely needed in the future. Though I do love feeling like a complete and utter badass once you've acquired enough perks and skill.

Mainly what I think TES needs to do better is present a world that "reacts" to the player in more meaningful ways. Currently everyone else in the world feels way too fake and way too repetitive. However considering how much better the people were in Skyrim compared to Oblivion... I've got higher hopes for the next installment.

Some improved world design also couldn't hurt, Morrowind was alien and cool but Oblivion was so unbearably banal. Thankfully Skyrim was a lot better with it's Norse Influences, Dwemmer Ruins and much more "gritty" and "used" Empire but it still wasn't up to the level of Morrowind.

Lastly I would love to see TES's do more of the brilliantly creepy stuff you run across in the Deadra Lord Quests in Skyrim (especially in Dragonborn, damn that creepy book realm), for me the Deadra Prince quests were really the best ones in the game.

 

[Dutchj]

I really don't think it's neccesary to stray from the first person perspective in order to have satisfying combat, they just need to improve on the feel of the combat.

If they give the combat more of an 'impact' feeling it would already be a lot better. In Skyrim you're mostly just whacking away at something until it dies. If both the player and the enemies are more visibly hindered by being hit it would make combat much more interesting. As it stands regular blows are just shrugged off with only the heavy attacks giving any kind of recoil. Having more realistic sounds whenever weapons clash and such would also be a great improvement.

When it comes to magic I think that there should be more versatility. You can currently only equip 2 spells at a time, and no weapons if you do. I also think that less powerful spells with shorter cooldowns make for a much more fun experience, as it makes combat more dynamic. For example, instead of increasing your armor for a minute, only increase it for a second by a slightly higher amount in order to block an incoming heavy hit.

 

[carpathic]

I have absolutely NO DESIRE to combat be any harder in TES games. Already Archery is nearly useless for me, on a console I just can't track the baddies fast enough.

Also, compared to oblivion where you'd be level 60 and a goblin with iron weapons and hide armor would routinely hand you your ass when you had nothing but daedric equipment, there have been major improvements.

I enjoy that godlike feeling, part of the whole Elder Scrolls thing is that you can make yourself godlike. That is why they have not stamped out the bugs like the boosting restoration-boosting smithing-improving sword to have 7000000000 damage per swing.

The story was not terrible either, the story is what you make of it. If you think the story was terrible, then you didn't play right. You are the hero and what you do is your business. A large part of an RPG is becoming in some sense, the character. You make the story, or are at least the hinge upon which the story hangs. Shitty story? Nope. Bad player!

 

[StrixMaxima]

All I want for TES 6 is:

- More spell effects and a spellmaker. Pretty please.
- A few more melee options, and some sort of skill crossing with Magic, such as temporary elemental enchantment on the fly, or Illusion-based attacks.
- Mysticism needs to come back. Yes, seriously.
- Static world, with minor things adjusted for levels in certain areas.
- Medium Armor, Spear and a meaningful Speech progression and benefits.
- Improved Poison, Disease and disables.
- Accurate Khajit and Argonian lower body.
- More text-based quests, less 'go to that arrow and be a hero'.

Keep the great Skyrim progress system, make good use of the amazing Lore the IP has at its disposal, and don't make PC gamers play with a console UI.

I still think you are beautiful, Bethesda.

 

[Windcaler]

I forgot to mention what I thought about the first person aspect. I think because its been in the last 3 games (maybe before I dont recall) I think it should remain. You can still have dodge, block, and riposte mechanics in either method. Actually in Jedi knight there was this option where everytime you pulled out your lightsaber it would change to 3rd person. I would like to see a similar option for new TES games. That way if you want to go outside in third person for melee combat you can without the need to fumble around buttons and you can still have that single player experience

 

[BeeGeenie]

*Scrolls. (Plural, not possessive).
Ahem, anyway...
I've always liked TES, and I think the combat's fine the way it is. Then again, I rarely play a melee character. I don't mind doing the Mage backpedal when a Nord rushes me with a battle axe. I suppose the enemy AI could be a bit more tactical, but that's not what I play for.

All I want for TES 6 is:

- More spell effects and a spellmaker. Pretty please.
- A few more melee options, and some sort of skill crossing with Magic, such as temporary elemental enchantment on the fly, or Illusion-based attacks.
- Mysticism needs to come back. Yes, seriously.
- Static world, with minor things adjusted for levels in certain areas.
- Medium Armor, Spear and a meaningful Speech progression and benefits.
- Improved Poison, Disease and disables.
- Accurate Khajit and Argonian lower body.
- More text-based quests, less 'go to that arrow and be a hero'.

Keep the great Skyrim progress system, make good use of the amazing Lore the IP has at its disposal, and don't make PC gamers play with a console UI.

I still think you are beautiful, Bethesda.

Bless you, sir, for you speak the truth.

 

[Cabisco]

Something I thought I'd mention is that for an open world I didn't really want to explore it for that long. I did, I ended up spending hours walking around trying to find quests and the sort but for me it felt far too scripted. If I talked to a friend and said 'Oh wow have you done the quest where...' It was always a yes/no answer, there was no randomness to it, something out of the blue could not happen as it was designed to be tightly controlled.

Far Cry 3 on the otherhand felt completely random and for me a much better open world as a result. On skyrim the most random event would be a dragon appearing, but once that happened repeatedly it didn't truely feel that different to any other creature. Whilst on far cry hunting down an enemy patrol, carefully planning your way to pick them off (again something that wasn't really in skyrim) only to get attacked by giant freaking birds blowing your cover as they try to peck your eyeballs.

Thats my opinion, I want more sense that what I go an experience out in the Elder Scrolls games is random and potentially unique to me rather than tightly controlled by the game.

 

[xefaros]

Simple answer no.Every Bethesda title has made a point to bring out the story and the immersion to the world removing the point of view from the first person perspective would damage the otherwise impeccable story(not counting Skyrim story).
You are thrown into a massive world that becomes you by simple immersion.

Oblivion, Fallout 3 AND skyrim all had a terrible story. The status quo never changes, the focus never goes beyond dungeon diving and there's only a small hamfisted story that makes you out to be a big hero, while never actually doing anything important except fighting the big scary monsters. Or getting some downstream water purifier to work for some hobo's and cows in a patch of dirt.

Now if you want to praise Skyrim or Oblivion and/or Fallout 3 for being hiking simulators, that's fine. But don't pretend they are more than that.

Seriously you never had a surprising twist on those games?I am not talking about main story missions there were all rubbish
but the point wasnt focused on the main story but in the world that could bring life to.If the talking dog(Skyrim) or the Carnivorous family(fallout 3) or the thieves guild on oblivion never captured your fantasy and imagination and sense of adventuring then i feel sorry for the experience you had and would require the games that ripped you from that enjoyment in order to enjoy something supperior

I am talking about the gems quest on all those FPS RPG that immerse you and feel like the breathing world the developer would strive to provide

But yea compared to other installments Skyrim did a very poor job in its totality for the questing

 

[IFS]

Spoiler: melee

I would like to see some elements of Dark Souls combat brought in for types of attacks. The addition of each type of weapon having its own attack patterns for light and heavy attacks would create a lot of options (note that I am not saying that they should make the games more difficult or go for the level of tension Dark Souls can create). It would also be nice to see some unique weapons with a special heavy attack like the Dragon Weapons in Dark Souls do (things like shooting out a shockwave, or some other magical effect). Plunging attacks like in Dark Souls or Dishonored would also be nice, if of somewhat limited use. I haven't played Chivalry so I can't comment on how well its combat would work.

For defensive options dodge moves would be interesting but I don't think they would work terribly well in first person, and you can already dodge in a sense by walking away from attacks. Parries could easily be introduced by timing a block properly like in KoA or Dishonored, leaving them open for a riposte.

Spoiler: magic

As for magic I like the one item/spell in each hand system and would like to see it expanded on, and there were several spell effects that were introduced in Skyrim that I think could be improved greatly. Wards for instance are pretty useless in Skyrim, it would be nice to see them take less magic to use, maybe give us more powerful ones that actually reflect spells, or possibly variants on the spell like a version that is placed in the ground to create a temporary wall.

I never really cared about making my own spells (it just seemed like something that existed to break the game to me), but I would like to see the ability to blend spells together by casting them in each hand. This would fit very naturally with some spells, for instance instead of several different Rune spells there could be one base Rune that you combine with another spell to get the effect that goes off when the spell is triggered. In other circumstances it could be used to put paralysis in a fireball or summon a monster with a buff on it, for instance flaming familiar could be cast by combining flames with the summon familiar spell, or you could create a Dremora Lord with Oakflesh by combining those spells. I would like to see some old spells return like Levitate, Mark and Recall, dispel magic, and restoration in particular needs more effects brought back. I would also like to see more stuff done with certain schools, like give us an illusion spell to enthrall/distract some enemies to either make managing a group easier or help make an escape.

In a similar vein to that it would be interesting to see the ability to combine spell effects with a weapon, say put a fire spell into arrows to get flaming arrows, or something similar. Being able to mash these sort of effects together would really help when trying a battlemage sort of playstyle.

Finally destruction magic needs to scale somewhat as you level up so that it doesn't end up completely useless compared to other skills.

Spoiler: Other stuff, enemies, skills

First off it would be nice to see enemies use just more of the options that exist in combat, and of course if new ones are added then they should be able to use those as well. Not necessarily to make them more challenging just more interesting to fight. More enemy types would help this, like mages that heal allies, sneaky enemies that try to ambush you, enemies that place Runes or other traps etc. I also wouldn't mind enemies being less of damage sponges at higher levels, but that's up for debate. Likewise the level scaling system is up for debate, and I think Skyrim was a step in the right direction but I would prefer to see some areas that cap off at a certain level while others remain higher than you for some time.

I would like to see a few skills brought back, unarmed could be really interesting if they did it right, with the different branches of the perk tree representing different styles of fighting instead of different weapons (like you have in one or two handed skill trees). I also have fond memories of acrobatics, but I can see how that would be somewhat limited, maybe if it was tied to the aforementioned plunging attacks it might work but I kind of doubt it. I would also like to see the perk system improved with more interesting perks added, and some of the useless ones (like the lockpicking tree or most of speech) replaced. I would also like to see a few more uses for existing skills, like say being able to make potions to throw at enemies (like a molotov cocktail).

Wow that got way longer than I thought it would, so I put the different parts in spoilers to make it easier to read.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

What Bethesda needs to do is get off their asses, and make a combat system that actually have enemy NPCs doing SOMETHING. Having NPCs block, shield bash, power attack, and do other things to the point where the PC cant just run up and spam mouse 1 would be VERY helpful.

What's sad is that NPCs in the game are programmed to do this, everything is in the game for them to use shield bashing, power attacks, blocking, timing blocks so they block right when you attack so it causes you to stagger, but none of them ever use it. Giving them perks like the "shield bashing can disarm" perk would also be helpful in making combat more tense.

Bethesda doesn't even need to do some massive overhaul to the combat engine, they just need to use what they have.

There is a mod called dual combat realism, that uses pretty much only the base game's combat system, and it makes combat so much freaking better. The mod can do it, so could Bethesda.

I've got that mod, I second this, it's a whole new level of challenge and tactics, simply by tweaking the block and stagger mechanics. And you can really tell the difference when you come up against a bandit in full heavy armour with a two handed weapon, or any enemy mages (which are crap in vanilla Skyrim) which have been turned into regenerating behemoths of death and your adventure ends with you running away screaming "AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!"

P.S. combine it with Unleveled Skyrim and you've got a game Dark Souls would call unnecessarily masochistic.

 

[The-Traveling-Bard]

Simple answer no.Every Bethesda title has made a point to bring out the story and the immersion to the world removing the point of view from the first person perspective would damage the otherwise impeccable story(not counting Skyrim story).
You are thrown into a massive world that becomes you by simple immersion.

What? That argument literally makes no sense. YES TES/Fall out are about world immersion, and story. But it's still a game. If you make a video game would you make any feature boring/worthless?

Diablo 3 crafting mechanic... was completely useless at lunch.
An entire... feature of a game.. worthless.
But that's my personal opinion.

I fully agree if you're going to make a game make everything detail good. Don't half ass it, and make the excuse. "Well... TES isn't about combat. It's about lore, and story telling." because that gives the designers to do shitty jobs on what the things they need to fix. I'm not asking for a spectacular fighter like Devil May Cry, but a better combat system won't hurt the game if they take the time to design it.

 

[kommando367]

Give bladed weapons more damage and give blunt weapons more knock-back with axes as the middle ground.

Basic limb damage system: hit 'em in the legs to slow 'em down, head for 2X damage, and arms to prevent attacks and weapons usage. This goes for melee, archery, and magic. Certain enemies would be immune.

Use the Halo: Reach system of parrying. If 2 enemies strike each other with melee weapons at the same time then both take 1/5th damage.

Allow certain destruction magic spells such as Incinerate, Thunderbolt, and Ice Storm (spells you can "hold" before casting) to be charged up for increased damage. Hold spell for 2 seconds for +25% damage, 4 seconds for +50% damage, etc...
Maybe have a destruction tree perk that allows charge upgrades at destruction skill levels 25,50,75, and 100.

 

[SajuukKhar]

-Accurate Khajit and Argonian lower body.

There are 17 forms of Khajiit, ranging from housecats, to lions, to ones that look so much like Bosmer they have to wear tattoos so people can tell them apart, to the ones we see in Oblivion/Skyrim with normal human like legs, to the ones we see in Morrowind with weird legs.

The Argonians share a similarly diverse morphology based on how much hist sap they drank after they were born, and have more possible forms then even the Khajiit.

There is no such thing as "correct" Khajiit/Argonian lower bodies,m we just see different forms of Khajiit and Argonians in Oblivion/Skyim then we did in Morrowind.

P.S. combine it with Unleveled Skyrim and you've got a game Dark Souls would call unnecessarily masochistic.

Unleveled Skyrim + duel combat realism is stupidly hard, I can agree with that, though it becomes super easy once to get to an absurdly high level like 70+

Definitely needs the option to turn off friendly fire.

they actually added that as a power from one of Hermaous Mora's black books in the Dragonborn DLC.

It also kills replayability because you can just do it all in one run

It only kills replayability if you CHOOSE to do it, don't, that's the point, its there for those who want to, and allows those who dont to not.

 

[Souplex]

Honestly, the combat systems in Skyrim were fine, they just need balancing.

 

[lasati]

"What would you do to improve the combat of the TES games?"

Oh god, everything. The TES games have always had awful combat and progression systems, mainly because they were completely broken/unbalanced but not in the way you want single player games to be unbalanced. In Oblivion, the optimal strategy was to tag skills that you *didn't* use in order to artificially depress your level. Fortunately they ripped that out for Skyrim. But Skryim's problem is that you were in a "worst of both worlds" situation in terms of generalist/specialist. Basically you were defined by your weapon choice, but there was nothing particularly stand-out interesting about say picking a sword over a mace. Just minor differences that didn't matter a whole lot within the context of the game world. The big split was melee/magic/ranged (which is the same meaningful split in any stock fantasy game). Basically it works like this...

Classes = strong identity, but limited connectivity
Classless = weak identity, but combinations can get super interesting

TES gets the weak identity from being classless, but making up your own combinations isn't interesting. This is the worst of both worlds. Typically in a single player game, this is where you find the "lol I combined X Y and Z and used my fire magic to put an explosive countdown on a guy, and then knocked him back 50 feet with my mace into his friends and blew them all up!" Single player games are fun exactly because of this kind of imbalance. In MMOs, or games with a multi-player component, you are a lot more limited to the "3% more damage... yay..." type stuff because the gross imbalance in single player games that make it fun also make it very un-fun for everyone around you in multi-play. So it's almost like they balanced it to be an MMO, but they really messed up on some of the additive bonuses so it still comes out broken.

Basically to improve combat in TES just pick a direction and mitigate the negatives, as opposed to getting into a worst-of-both-worlds situation. Personally, I would find strong themes/identities between all the weapons, figure out how each weapon has synergy with everything else in basic terms, design strong abilities/attacks/spells that stick to the theme, and let players figure out the interesting combinations that may be completely broken in silly/exciting ways. And then just make sure there is enough monster-variety that the player can't be a 1-trick-pony all the time (what's easy for player A might be hard for player B).

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I have absolutely NO DESIRE to combat be any harder in TES games. Already Archery is nearly useless for me, on a console I just can't track the baddies fast enough.

Seriously? Have you tried upping the sensitivity? I don't want to be patronising but that shouldn't be happening.

OP: I'd support the combat being much more deep. I quite liked fable's system, where a spell would be aoe normally but become a fireball or other ranged effect if you targeted something. I'm not saying that Skyrim should have the same system, but something where magic alters based on context would be cool, and mean you could do a lot of stuff with just one spell equipped.

How about spell charge levels? Let's say you've got a generic 'fire' spell equipped.
Charge lvl 1: You fire off a small fireball by briefly tapping the button
Lvl 2: You fire off a more potent fireball by holding the button then releasing. Instead of releasing, you can also tap circle to release it as a weak aoe type attack.
Lvl3: More powerful version of lvl 2, with the addition that you can now zoom using L2 (or something) to make it a fast moving 'sniper' style attack

By using a system like this with lots of permutations on the same basic attack type, you could conceivably perform every possible fire type attack without having to change your equipped spell once.

Melee needs an overhaul too. I think my problem with it is that it feels too floaty. It should be brutal and crunchy, again, more context stuff could be used for variety too.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well if their big wigs had any sense at all they would be on the phone to the Dragon's Dogma devs pleading for their combat team (kidnapping or extortion is also ok in this instance).

Because the combat mechanics in TES just have nothing to them, it is all bearable but no part of it is good enough to build upon, if you ever want it good it must be designed from scratch and hopefully by people who figured out the next step in fantasy brawlers.