Re: What would you consider important for Enderal?
Verfasst: 01.07.2012 18:44
Hey,
I know that i am probably late for the party, discovered Nehrim just a week ago, but i can't resist to not contribute to this topic, hoping that something might stuck or that at least i will share some ideas my modding experience is minimal so if i suggest something totally off please dont bash me
1. Bring back the condition to the weapons and armor. I missed it in Skyrim, and i think that it opens some interesting opportunities with blacksmithing. For example, if you would have 2 levels of condition, one for overall condition of the material (life expectancy), and second for actual damage condition which would improve weapon damage for certain amount of charges, but it would lower the overall condition of the weapon. This way you could sharpen your blade for excess damage output, but it would cause in long run deterioration and the need to reforge or replace the weapon altogether due to usage. This would in turn allow the ability to craft low tier weapons and armor from high end materials, i.e. an “iron dagger” crafted out of ebony ore would be much more resilient, yet nowhere near damage output of an actual ebony dagger. As well you could have recipes hidden throughout the world for crafting specialty items, or combinations of material with certain recipe.Overall i think the blacksmithing in Skyrim is critically underdeveloped.
2. Alchemy revamped. It would be much more engaging if you could put something like alchemy system Witcher 1, i.e. make potions to be more powerfull, with less immediate effect(healing over time etc.). This way you could prevent abuse of potions in battles (maybe with something like toxicity as well), and also some more planning in fight would be required (to drink potions before the battle etc), not just charge > buttonmash. And this would tie nicely with my next suggestion, which would be to get rid of inventory pause.
Really, if you can just go into inventory anytime, while time magically stops around you, eat and drink to full health and continue the fight, than the amount of situations which can directly threaten you is drastically reduced. The only skill required in Skyrim to avoid death is an itchy inventory finger.
3.Drowning and Poisoning: i am not sure whether this was implemented in Skyrim, but i think that drowning shouldnt affect the same mechanics as health counter,i.e. when your breath reaches 0% you should die ,regardless of how much health you have. The same goes for poisoning, i think that it would be much more interesting if you could use some sort of a first aid, cure poison or cure disease, without the poison affecting directly your health. Untreated poisoning would sooner or later lead to death, regardless of the amount of health that you have left. Also the effect of disease could be more dramatic. And the deadly fall height should not be calculated by the amount of health that you have as well (one of the few things that i liked about Skyrim). Being beefed up doesnt really help in denying gravity:) In Nehrim I couldn't find a fall which would take more than 50% of my health.
4. Horses: I think horses in Skyrim were a little more than a nuissance. But i think that you cant really expand on horses without expanding stamina concept (extremely shallow in skyrim). Horses doesnt need to be very fast, but they need to be usefull. In my opinion enjoyable use of horse requires: a) Running actually draining stamina b) Fatigue regeneration scaled (not like in Skyrim that speed of recovery is same under pretty much all circumstances running/walking/riding/sitting/fightning etc...) c) Horse bag (no overkill, just realistic) d) Horse follow, so that you can pick some herbs and your horse would be following. This leads me to another issue which is inventory management. I have no idea whether you can do this, but it would be totally mindblowing if the inventory could be separated into 3-5 classes, lets say a weapon category, ingredients and potions, misc. Whenever you would pick up an item it would be automatically assigned into the appropriate section.If it’s a sword, it goes into weapon and armor category which has capacity of 150 (sword is 10 for example). If its an ingredient it would go into its respective category, which would have 100/100. This way you could have together still quite decent carry weight, without the ridiculous “drop one sword pick up 100 flowers” bit. I also think that Skyrim' "device" of walking with carry weight of 1000/300 does not help the immersion either.
5. Deadly enviroment: This is maybe issue of Skyrim more than anything, but i think that if you would have an incentive to avoid water for some unpleasent effects (getting cold, freezing, getting your equipment wet, etc.) than you could build up some pretty neat tension when looking for bridges, rocks, or other means of traversing the water. Swimming should be end result, not a no brain shortcutting.
6. Map and Map markers Some people have already mentioned this, i just want to endorse that Google Skyrim is BS and completely useless I would be much happier with simple paper map, in my opinion much more immersive too. If it would be possible, the need to buy it without all the major cities highlighted would be a great addition. As far as map markers goes, this was nearly game breaking in Nehrim for me. In Oblivion i didnt mind it as much, because the dungeons were numerous with almost no reward for completing, but in Nehrim you know that in those 10 dungeons out of 15 in the area has to be the set armor, so systematically clearing dungeons while you are scanning for their location from the road is killing the exploration aspect...in a game which one of the main focuses is on exploration.
7. Skill system: damage of weapons not affected by skill value, so that getting to the very high skill very quickly wouldn't be difficulty breaking, but would rather serve as an improvement in technical and strategical side of combat. In Nehrim nohthing can withstand more than 3 hits of my armageddon, which can be obtained pretty early
So, to wrap up, in the end just let me encourage you on making a lot of moving platforms (lifts, trains, etc), something which really lacked in all elder scrolls, great job here, keep it up.
And after all, i know this comes up a lot, but a bit more side quests wouldn't hurt. I know its asking a lot, but if you could have like 1 or 2 quests per settlement, than it would help with merging with the world and its characters, rather than just looking for the first trader before moving on. But please, don't put radiant system in No quests are better than radiant quests
In the end let me say that you did helluva job with Nehrim, i am yet to finish it, still have to check arktvend (i cant compare now), but most of your game is better than Oblivion itself, and the rest of it is on par
P.S: I am sorry for the lenght of this.. kinda got carried away
I know that i am probably late for the party, discovered Nehrim just a week ago, but i can't resist to not contribute to this topic, hoping that something might stuck or that at least i will share some ideas my modding experience is minimal so if i suggest something totally off please dont bash me
1. Bring back the condition to the weapons and armor. I missed it in Skyrim, and i think that it opens some interesting opportunities with blacksmithing. For example, if you would have 2 levels of condition, one for overall condition of the material (life expectancy), and second for actual damage condition which would improve weapon damage for certain amount of charges, but it would lower the overall condition of the weapon. This way you could sharpen your blade for excess damage output, but it would cause in long run deterioration and the need to reforge or replace the weapon altogether due to usage. This would in turn allow the ability to craft low tier weapons and armor from high end materials, i.e. an “iron dagger” crafted out of ebony ore would be much more resilient, yet nowhere near damage output of an actual ebony dagger. As well you could have recipes hidden throughout the world for crafting specialty items, or combinations of material with certain recipe.Overall i think the blacksmithing in Skyrim is critically underdeveloped.
2. Alchemy revamped. It would be much more engaging if you could put something like alchemy system Witcher 1, i.e. make potions to be more powerfull, with less immediate effect(healing over time etc.). This way you could prevent abuse of potions in battles (maybe with something like toxicity as well), and also some more planning in fight would be required (to drink potions before the battle etc), not just charge > buttonmash. And this would tie nicely with my next suggestion, which would be to get rid of inventory pause.
Really, if you can just go into inventory anytime, while time magically stops around you, eat and drink to full health and continue the fight, than the amount of situations which can directly threaten you is drastically reduced. The only skill required in Skyrim to avoid death is an itchy inventory finger.
3.Drowning and Poisoning: i am not sure whether this was implemented in Skyrim, but i think that drowning shouldnt affect the same mechanics as health counter,i.e. when your breath reaches 0% you should die ,regardless of how much health you have. The same goes for poisoning, i think that it would be much more interesting if you could use some sort of a first aid, cure poison or cure disease, without the poison affecting directly your health. Untreated poisoning would sooner or later lead to death, regardless of the amount of health that you have left. Also the effect of disease could be more dramatic. And the deadly fall height should not be calculated by the amount of health that you have as well (one of the few things that i liked about Skyrim). Being beefed up doesnt really help in denying gravity:) In Nehrim I couldn't find a fall which would take more than 50% of my health.
4. Horses: I think horses in Skyrim were a little more than a nuissance. But i think that you cant really expand on horses without expanding stamina concept (extremely shallow in skyrim). Horses doesnt need to be very fast, but they need to be usefull. In my opinion enjoyable use of horse requires: a) Running actually draining stamina b) Fatigue regeneration scaled (not like in Skyrim that speed of recovery is same under pretty much all circumstances running/walking/riding/sitting/fightning etc...) c) Horse bag (no overkill, just realistic) d) Horse follow, so that you can pick some herbs and your horse would be following. This leads me to another issue which is inventory management. I have no idea whether you can do this, but it would be totally mindblowing if the inventory could be separated into 3-5 classes, lets say a weapon category, ingredients and potions, misc. Whenever you would pick up an item it would be automatically assigned into the appropriate section.If it’s a sword, it goes into weapon and armor category which has capacity of 150 (sword is 10 for example). If its an ingredient it would go into its respective category, which would have 100/100. This way you could have together still quite decent carry weight, without the ridiculous “drop one sword pick up 100 flowers” bit. I also think that Skyrim' "device" of walking with carry weight of 1000/300 does not help the immersion either.
5. Deadly enviroment: This is maybe issue of Skyrim more than anything, but i think that if you would have an incentive to avoid water for some unpleasent effects (getting cold, freezing, getting your equipment wet, etc.) than you could build up some pretty neat tension when looking for bridges, rocks, or other means of traversing the water. Swimming should be end result, not a no brain shortcutting.
6. Map and Map markers Some people have already mentioned this, i just want to endorse that Google Skyrim is BS and completely useless I would be much happier with simple paper map, in my opinion much more immersive too. If it would be possible, the need to buy it without all the major cities highlighted would be a great addition. As far as map markers goes, this was nearly game breaking in Nehrim for me. In Oblivion i didnt mind it as much, because the dungeons were numerous with almost no reward for completing, but in Nehrim you know that in those 10 dungeons out of 15 in the area has to be the set armor, so systematically clearing dungeons while you are scanning for their location from the road is killing the exploration aspect...in a game which one of the main focuses is on exploration.
7. Skill system: damage of weapons not affected by skill value, so that getting to the very high skill very quickly wouldn't be difficulty breaking, but would rather serve as an improvement in technical and strategical side of combat. In Nehrim nohthing can withstand more than 3 hits of my armageddon, which can be obtained pretty early
So, to wrap up, in the end just let me encourage you on making a lot of moving platforms (lifts, trains, etc), something which really lacked in all elder scrolls, great job here, keep it up.
And after all, i know this comes up a lot, but a bit more side quests wouldn't hurt. I know its asking a lot, but if you could have like 1 or 2 quests per settlement, than it would help with merging with the world and its characters, rather than just looking for the first trader before moving on. But please, don't put radiant system in No quests are better than radiant quests
In the end let me say that you did helluva job with Nehrim, i am yet to finish it, still have to check arktvend (i cant compare now), but most of your game is better than Oblivion itself, and the rest of it is on par
P.S: I am sorry for the lenght of this.. kinda got carried away