#esvi

I already talked about what I’d fix for Stealth builds, but my other favorite play style is Magic builds. Don’t expect one for warriors though. I have only ever played a warrior one time, and I got bored of it pretty quickly.

- I want Necromancers to be able to do more. I liked that Skyrim expanded magic to give players the chance to play Necromancers, but for Elder Scrolls VI I want them to take Necromancy, and push it further. In Skyrim, necromancy pretty much only brings back the dead. While we got more options in Creation Club and Anniversary Edition, most times when I build a necromancer, I still rely on mods to give my necromancer damage-dealing spells. Elder Scrolls Online moves in the right direction, giving Necromancers a multitude of different necromancy spells that aren’t all just animating skeletons, and I’d like Bethesda to keep going in that direction. Let me create a Spirit Cloak of wailing phantoms or necrotic energy. Let me manifest skeletal armor and lob magical skulls. Let me drain life, magicka, and/or stamina from my foes to make them weak and easy to kill. Let me sacrifice a portion of my health to deal massive damage with forbidden dark magic, paying a blood price for power.

- Allow players to interact with their summons. It’s all fun and games summoning frost atronochs or having an army of skeletons. Until you need to move through a hallway and your stupid summon is blocking your way. You can’t move them out of the way either. It takes the fun out of playing a necromancer when you have to just stand there and wait for the spell to expire, attack your own summon, or pointlessly run into them, hoping you might push them out of the way just long enough to get past them.

- Give damaging spells to every spell category. Are you trying to play a sneaky illusionist, but oops, Frenzy is your only means of fighting enemies with your illusion magic. Good thing sometimes you only get attacked by one enemy and now Frenzy is worthless. This sort of feeds back into the expanding Necromancy thing. Sometimes players want magic catered to their character, or they challenge themselves with a certain build.

- Add or Expand Upon Spell Types. In the Dawnguard DLC, there are a few Restoration spells that deal Sun damage. Through mods, it’s possible to build an entire character around being a sun-damage cleric type, and it’s a lot of fun for roleplaying. I’d like to see Elder Scrolls VI take this idea and expand it further, making Sun damage the main damage type of the Restoration school. Maybe make Psychic spells the damage type of the Illusion School. Necrotic or Shadow damage for Conjuration. Stone and Wood magic for Alteration, altering Alteration to the school for environmental magic. Maybe Water and Wind would also be Alteration. Add Blood magic or Dark magic to the school of Destruction.

- Add unique quest and faction spells. Have you finished a quest for the priests of Dibella, or joined their priest faction? Maybe the high priestess will teach you some Illusion or Restoration spells only available to those favored by Dibella and/or the Aedra. Have you killed in the name of Sithis and the Night Mother? Here’s some spells that deal Poison and/or Necrotic damage, disguise your appearance to frame others for murder, or a spell that disorient guards while turning you invisible, allowing you to escape detection and hide from authorities. Did you become a vampire? Here’s spells you only gain access to as a vampire. Have you won the favor of Nocturnal? You should get some spells available only to those favored by the Daedra, as well as some stuff exclusive to Nocturnal. Now, if I want to build a Priest of the Divines, I can win the favor of all the Eight Divines, and just build a character around Sun damage, Aedric Spells, and the unique spells I can only get from each Aedra. Did I build a Necromancer? I’ll bet the unique spells from Vampires, Sithis, or even Arkay made that build more diverse and interesting.

- Allow Mages to Play Different Archetypes. While I don’t want hard classes in Elder Scrolls VI (we have Elder Scrolls Online for that) make it possible for magic builds to cater to every magical archetype: Wizards, Necromancers, Clerics, Druids, Bards, and Cultists/Warlocks (Daedric Priests). And by mixing those with other builds, you can make a Paladin, Ranger, Arcane Trickster, or Arcane Knight. Just add spells that fit those archetypes.

- Give mages a Lockpicking Spell. Have you ever played a mage in a dungeon and come across a mandatory expert level lock that you need to pick, but you’re a mage build and picking a lock just feels out of character? Give mages spells to open the door or teleport past it so that they aren’t forced into one type of gameplay. Maybe it’s the point that Stealth characters are the best dungeon delvers, but it kinda breaks the immersion of playing a master wizard. It’s also not very immersive for Warrior players, but this isn’t about them. Sure, you could just make your follower pick the lock, but that’s not the point. You’re a mage. Use magic to solve the problem.

- Make learning and mastering magic part of the Mage Guild Questline. You barely need to know magic to become the Archmage of the College. I’ve never completed the Mages’ College storyline, but I’m pretty sure you only need to know two spells to complete the storyline. Whatever random spell you demonstrate to Faldi to cross the bridge and join the college (which you can skip with a high enough Persuasion. I would know, I’ve done it) and Steadfast Ward. You can become the Archmage of Skyrim knowing only 3 - 5 spells depending on race and persuading Faldi. I should need to learn spells and prove my level of progress before my guild master trusts that I’m strong enough for the next task in the main storyline. Is it possibly frustrating and grindy? Maybe. But I’d rather have a main storyline take me 20 hours than 20 minutes. This kinda gets back to the issue of ranks within factions I’ve mentioned over several posts now. I should not be the archmage of Skyrim with 3-5 apprentice level spells.

- Have multiple Mage Guilds. Ideally, the best choice Bethesda could make in giving us factions is to basically make one for every archetype: a wizard’s college, a cleric’s cloister/temple, a druid’s grove, a witch’s/hagraven’s coven, a bard’s troupe, a necromancer’s sect, and a warlock’s cult. But I’d settle for 4 factions: Wizards, Aedric Priests, Necromancers, and Daedric Priests. Though for the Priests, I would like it if you could join the temple/cult of a specific Aedra or Daedra. While I’d settle for a blanket faction of Priest that worships all of the Aedra or a Cultist that serves all the Daedra, it would be fun to be able to play through a game as solely a Priest of Dibella, and serving only her for that character without automatically being in a faction for all of the aedra. Plus, more factions means more storylines, more hours of gameplay, more builds, more playthroughs, and more unique characters.

- Have Multiple Mage Colleges. If they can’t manage to have multiple “class” factions, then just having the mage college be split into literal schools of magic would be the next best thing. It would still be an improvement over Skyrim. Let there be a school of restoration, so that if I want to only focus on restoration magic, I can just attend that school if I so choose. I cannot emphasize how barren and empty the College of Winterhold feels. At least across multiple colleges, 3 students each would actually amount to something.

- Streamline the Mage Perk Tree. If you’re going to play a mage, you’re going to dump a lot of points into boosting every type of magic. It’s doable, but mages have to invest a lot more perk points than Warrior or Stealth characters.

- Make Magic less taxing. It costs a LOT of magicka to be a mage. I often hear people say when building mage characters to split your skill points 70-30. 70% Magicka, 30% Health. Magic basically requires complete commitment, because if you only put a few points into magicka, you will struggle to cast just about any spell, making playing an Arcane Trickster or an Arcane Knight very difficult, forcing you to invest a lot of resources into magic that you maybe only wanted as a support skill.

- Add a Faith/Alliance Perk Tree. This is again mostly for Aedra/Daedra, but the concept could be expanded to other things, like how Skyrim has perk trees for the Vampire Lord and Werewolf but use different points than the ones you use for leveling your main skills. Conceptually, it would give unique perk trees for either the Aedra as a collective whole, or each aedra individually, and likewise for the Daedra (and possibly other gods and powerful figures like Sithis). This would allow you to earn points with those you serve, unlocking new features as you level up your faith or loyalty with that higher power. Thus allowing a character to really worship and devote their build to either a single higher being like a Priest of Dibella build, or an entire pantheon like a Priest of the Divines build. However, maybe this idea could work as sort of a faction tree. Unlocking unique skills and perks as you level up in a faction, like how joining factions in Elder Scrolls Online gives the player unique skills and perks from joining that faction. Or, you could even earn the respect of high power NPCs. Wouldn’t it be nice if befriending someone like Maven Black-Briar came with perks? An Alliance skill tree where you unlock new perks as you win over NPCs would give players incentive to become invested in the social aspect of Tamriel. Not unlike confidante perks in Persona 5. Your friends make you powerful, and it’s good to have friends in high places. Especially if you’re set in High Rock where there’s so much intrigue, backstabbing, and plotting, having perks from your allies would be beneficial and immersive.

- Vampires of Every Shape and Size. I mentioned this in my vampire post, but I’ll repeat it here. I’d like to see multiple vampire factions in the next game. Elder Scrolls VI is theorized to be set in the Iliac Bay region of High Rock and Hammerfell, which is host to NINE different Vampire Clans. That’s enough options and variety that you could have 3 clans each that lean more toward Warrior builds, Stealth Builds, and Magicka Builds. And those are just the ones in the Iliac Bay region, that’s not including the other vampire clans that exist in Rivenspire.

One of the best ways to immerse oneself into a fantasy world in my opinion is to invest a build around the unique aspects of the setting, especially pantheons or unique races, factions, or quests. However, while the Daedric Princes are able to be found in Skyrim, and each have a quest connected to them, the Aedra don’t have the same love. There’s a quest Dinya Balu can give you to unite lovers, Hamal will send you to find the Sybil of Dibella, and Danica Pure-Spring tasks the player with restoring a dead and sickly tree, but these are relatively small, short quests. While these missions are fine, I find myself craving more when it comes to Aedra involvement in the next installment.

I want to be able to pray to any god, Aedric, Daedric, or other. More than that, I want each god to provide a useful blessing. What’s the point of serving Sithis if I’m not going to get any blessing from committing murders in his name?

The blessings from worship should last longer than 8 hours. An hour is pretty short in-game, making blessings feel rather short-lived. Especially because the shrines are not usually in a central location for gameplay, the player is left going out of their way to get their blessings. I used a mod to put a statue of Nocturnal in the Cistern of the Thieves’ Guild from the early game, and because I had to pass the shrine to finish Thieves’ Guild quests, I could grab her blessing each time I passed her, so the 8 hour limit really wasn’t an issue. But that’s because the shrine was in an ideal location that grabbing her blessing didn’t require any active effort from me to seek it out. Either shrines need to be more readily available, or their blessings need to last longer.

The Wintersun mod should be used as a template for the next game. Not only does it make worship worthwhile, there’s an added incentive to be loyal to a particular deity.

There should be a faction for priests/cultists. Whether it’s a blanket faction that’s the same no matter which god you worship, or there’s a tailored one for each temple or god, I want to be able to join Dibella’s temple as a new recruit, and by the late game, be able to work my way up to high priest or priestess.

It would be nice if there was unique items for each Aedra and Daedra. It’s hard to feel like a priest of Dibella when your robes are the exact same as the priests of Mara or the priests of Talos. More colors, designs, etc would help each god feel different. It makes sense that Mara’s priests would be quite modest, while Dibella’s priestly robes would show off as much skin as possible. This would also extend to armor, weapons, or quest items. Enough that I could completely deck my character out in gear of a single god.

Make Sun damage a staple of the Restoration school moving forward. I used a mod to give my priest of Dibella the ability to deal sun damage to slay draugr and vampires, and he feels more like a holy character than I did running the exact same character using fire magic.

I want to have a reputation system with the specific god you worship. Based on your actions, decisions, donations, what-have-you. Perhaps even unlocking unique perks from being devoted to a particular god. Maybe even make religion its own separate perk tree so that you can grow stronger as your devote yourself to your deity’s whims.

I want to be able to live in a temple. This would obviously share some overlap with the holy factions idea, but I want the temple to literally count as my home. I want it to actually be my place of residence. It doesn’t make sense to roleplay as a priest but to not live in the church or temple. Otherwise, let me turn my player’s home into a temple. So long as the place where I rest my head is also a place where myself and others can come to worship.

Obviously, I’m more than a little late to the party, but I’d figure I could throw my own hat into the ring and put out my own thoughts on how to improve the series moving forward. I have other ideas and thoughts, but I wanted to start with relationships as I have felt more satisfaction from a good home life than I have from any power trip in the game.

Allow players to declare their orientation at character creation, including pronouns, and what gender or genders they are or are not attracted to. Skyrim did a good job at not hardlocking any romance options behind gender barriers, but with a set orientation, maybe the game can slightly tweak itself so that your gay male PC gets better prices when bartering with male shopkeepers, Dibella’s blessings work better against men, men will actively flirt with you, while women won’t make any advances toward you. If you're asexual, you can wear an Amulet of Mara for the healing bonus without having to constantly dodge marriage proposals.

Every race should have more than one romanceable option of more than one gender, and the same should apply to adoptable children. Are you playing as a Khajit? Well, I hope you modded in a way to romance another Khajit or are comfortable with being the black sheep of the family. When you’ve got a Nord husband and two Imperial children, you stand out a lot as the only furry family member. That’s not to say interracial marriages are bad, but it can break the immersion to stick out so severely in the family home. Having spouses and children from every race can help for immersion, especially if you want your in-game family to feel more like a unit. And being saddled with just one or two choices isn’t much of a choice. As a bonus, race-based homes should exist as well.

Allow for any spouse to also be a follower, and vice versa. One of the most rewarding experiences for me was being able to marry Marcurio in my first ever play-through and go dungeon-delving with my husband. It felt much more like we were a pair of heroes saving the world together, and falling in love along the way. It just makes sense to me that everyone you can marry should be able to follow you, and vice versa.

Allow your spouse/follower to join your faction. Because Marcurio followed me everywhere, it was kind of strange that he could just wander into the Thieves’ Guild headquarters and not draw any attention, and the same with the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary. What’s more, I find it odd he never had anything to say about realizing his husband was a thief and an assassin. He just blindly followed me. Now, Marcurio is down for both theft and murder, his AI doesn’t kick up a fuss about it, but it still strikes me as odd that he not only never commented on it, but no faction members acknowledged Marcurio’s presence, or offered him a position in the faction.

Children should be able to grow up. Maybe I’m alone in this, but after I adopted my children in my first playthrough, I kept wondering if they were going to grow up at any point. Obviously, waiting and passing time doesn’t effect much, as the player can go months without eating or sleeping, but I found it kind of endearing imagining the idea of training your child in your skill set, taking them on as your apprentice, and teaching them the skills you’ve mastered. Perhaps even allowing your child to eventually join your faction as they improve, or even become a follower once they’ve reached a certain skill level. If going on quests with your spouse is romantic, then being able to go adventuring with your child can have similarly heartwarming impacts.

If it’s too impractical to make every spouse a follower, then just make most NPCs available as spouses. Nothing is more frustrating than finding an attractive, interesting character, and not being able to romance them. And it’s not as though this is impossible to do, as there are mods that already let you do this in Skyrim.

Maybe before you’re allowed to marry someone, you have to be given a quest by the head priest at a Temple of Mara or a Temple of Dibella, where you have to complete this quest with your romantic partner as a test of your relationship before the priest will join the two of you together in matrimony.

Give spouses extended families. As much as I loved marrying Marcurio to be partners in crime, I had a whole different experience using a mod to marry Jon Battle-Born. Living in a house with such a big family made me feel much more immersed in the world, and when I realized there weren’t spare beds for adopting Lucia, I began looking frantically for a mod that would let me move those Battle-Born in-laws into a player home so that I could adopt a child with Jon without having to lose that big family bond. It made me realize how odd it is that most spouses come without any family attached, and made me more invested in having a bigger family in later games.

Spouses should have added interactions, like giving them new clothes to wear, kissing them, holding hands, or taking them out for a date to a restaurant or mead hall. Hell, I found just walking with Jon from his house down to the Bannered Mare to be somewhat romantic. Though to be fair, that’s mainly because vanilla Skyrim is very lacking in romance. I think it would also benefit from things like: spouses giving the player chores or missions, wanting to go on a vacation somewhere, if they moved out of a home with a family, wanting to go see their family, or having extended character-driven quests. Marcurio is fascinated by Dwemmer ruins, but he has no quests where he eagerly asks the player to go explore Dwemmer ruins he found in a book. Having character-driven quests that immerse the player in their spouse or follower’s personal interests would help the characters feel more immersive. More than just a quest to unlock them as a spouse or follower, having a quest where they want to join you and are excited by the adventure of it makes the player’s relationship with the NPC feel so much more real and organic.

Speaking of which, make romance a little more complicated. I often joke that Marcurio is basically a prostitute. You give him money, and as soon as you hire him, the first thing you can do is ask him to marry you. You don’t even have to leave Riften. You could literally escape Helgen, find the Whiterun Stables, hire the carriage to Riften, get the Amulet of Mara, buy Marcurio’s services, and be married by your second day in the game. You basically just bought a husband for 700 gold and he’ll be useful for the entire first half of your playthrough since his level cap is 50.

While on the subject, all followers shouldn’t have a level cap. Sure, they can start at whatever level seems appropriate for their character, but they shouldn’t stop being good followers once you hit a certain level. It takes away from the game when your favorite follower is maxed out, so you have to choose between continuing to adventure with them as enemies get stronger and he falls farther and farther behind, or abandon your friend to spare him the probability of dying. Plus, it just pigeon holds people into picking the followers that do level to 100, which may not be their favorite characters.

Maybe your spouse has a certain taste, and will decorate your house to fit their interests. Marry Jon Battle-Born, and you’ll come home to find the house adorned in pelts, weapon racks, and stuffed bears. Marry Marcurio, and your house will acquire bookshelves full of lore-based tomes and spell books, the rooms decorated with Dwemmer designs and craftsmanship. Something that simply says “I live here too, darling”.

Maybe I’m just sentimental, but I’d love the ability to take a family portrait. Spouse, children, maybe the in-laws. It’s a nice way to make the player feel truly included in a family structure, and it becomes an item you can hang in any family home, either a player home, or your spouse’s home.

Speaking of the player’s home, I know I’m not the only one who kinda wishes they could have had a fancier home in Skyrim. I mean, you can become the Thane of every kingdom, but you can’t get a castle or become a lord in your own right? You can’t rule over a town, get citizens, or lounge on a throne with the worst posture imaginable? It would help feel more immersive.

Five Features That Need to Return in The Elder Scrolls 6

No matter how you look at it, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was a turning point for the series. Never before had Bethesda’s fantasy RPG series held so much mass appeal, something that was probably due to both excellent marketing and the ease at which newcomers could jump-in and start exploring. Skyrim went without many of the features that defined past Bethesda games though, so now that players have had over ten years to get used to The Elder Scrolls, perhaps Bethesda could iterate on the following when they eventually ship The Elder Scrolls VI.

Check it out!

I have waited so long. I honestly thought it would never come. God, this is amazing. 2018/19 is the years of great videogames.

Fucc, ESVI, its single player too. I thought they abandoned that shit. I also saw a post from some insider saying they arent making anothet because they are making such good money on online (even tho it wasnt that great imo). Call me a fucking lame ass, but skyrim was my favorite game. I played that shit for fucking 12 hours straight in a dark room for like, 2 months and still havent finished everything. Like botw was cool and all, but it ran out of content so fast and really didnt meet the standard of “freedom” like skyrim did.

The new pokemon game. Everytime a new, revolutionary counsel comes out from nintedo, i wish for a new pokemon game that will be like the classics, with added flair. I was met well enough with the 3ds but NOW THIS HAS STEPPED UP THW GODDAMN GAME like oh cute i can feed pokepuffs BITCH I CAN PLAY WITH A FRIEND. I CAN 3D SEE THIS. ITS LIKE ITS REAL.