This is the second part of my Elder Scrolls VI Wishlist. You don't have to read them in order, but i would suggest it as i'll be referencing things i suggested in part I. I'm also going to be using Skyrim as a reference.
Also sorry for the weird spacing blogger is garbage
NPC's
In Skyrim, a lot of NPC's feel like filler, for example, repeating the same line over and over again whenever you get near them, or just saying "Yes?" or "Need something?" repeatedly when you interact with them rather than actually behaving like sentient beings. In ESVI, i would like to see an expansion of their behaviors. For example, instead of just wandering around all day, they would talk with other NPC's(and not just for quests, like klimmek), like in Oblivion. They would also have varied behaviors, for instance, one day they might farm, another day they might take a walk around the city, another they would go to the inn, etc. More adventurous NPC's might even venture outside of the town and explore. Having NPC's do the exact same thing every day makes them feel like, well, robots rather than people. For example, all the forgemasters. Every day they would get up, forge stuff, and then go back to bed. Now i can understand them doing that most of the time, as it's their job, but having them take breaks every now and then would be nice. Maybe on one of the days of the week, all NPC's would take a day off from work and do something different.
Also, each NPC should have their own personality. For example, one NPC might hate all crime and report you to the guards if they catch you stealing, while another might just comment on your skills. Each NPC would have certain things they like and things they dislike, which would have an impact on your relationship with them. So if your follower hates the daedra, they would refuse to accompany you on a daedric quest, while another would happily follow you, and maybe even encourage you to seek out the daedra.
I would also bring disposition back. Each NPC would have a base level of how much they like you, and doing different things would raise or lower that level. So using Skyrim as an example, if you're wearing full stormcloak armor, someone who supports the imperials would have a slightly lowered opinion of you, while wearing imperial armor would raise their opinion of you.
Crime and Punishment
In Skyrim, if you steal something worth 1 gold, the guards will demand you pay the fine, or pay with your blood. Like dude, it's 1 gold, chill. And if you accidentally hit someone because you clicked through their dialogue too fast, everyone nearby, not just the guards, will immediately attempt to wipe you off the face of the planet.
First off, there should be a window where if you sheathe your weapons after hitting someone or drop the item you stole, people would assume it was an accident and not try to kill you in revenge. If a guard catches you, there should be a dialogue option for you to say "Sorry, that was an accident." and depending on the severity of your crime, the guard would believe you. For example, if you only stole one item, the guard would be more likely to believe you than if you unlocked a display case and stole everything inside. Higher speech levels would let you get away with saying it was an accident even with bigger crimes.
When you resist arrest, if you aren't attacking anyone, guards will try to brign you into custody non-lethally. So if you steal something, resist arrest, and run away, the guards would do things like shield bashing you, or casting slow or paralyze spells. That way, you won't end up in the middle of an impromptu civil war because you stole a sweetroll. However, if you have a higher bounty, the guards will just try and kill you, as they do in Skyrim.
Jail should also be more interesting. Instead of just sleeping through your sentence, you should be assigned a task to do to work off your bounty, like mining, chopping wood, killing rats, cleaning or building, etc. The worse your crime was, the more challenging of a task you'll be required to do. So if you commit multiple murders, you might have to kill a dragon(without your usual gear) to finish your sentence.
Also people wouldn't be psychic and be able to tell which of your 29,500 gold pieces is stolen, so you would be able to sell most stolen goods unless they're super unique.
Speech
In Skyrim, speech was pretty boring. It increases when you buy or sell stuff and sometimes when you choose certain dialogue options. I would expand the system.
First, i would make a few base dialogue options that you could use in pretty much any relevant situation, such as "Yes", "No", "I'm done talking", "Can i help", "Tell me more", etc. There wouldn't be any "Click the only available dialogue option to proceed to the next part of the conversation". You would only have the prompt to speak if there was something relevant for you to say, and more than one dialogue option. So if someone is talking about how they lost their sword, you might have the option to offer to help, wish them luck, laugh at their misfortunes, or tell them you don't really care. There would also be a "Sorry, i didn't catch that" option so if you accidentally skipped a piece of dialogue, you could have them repeat it.
If you were trying to persuade an NPC to do something, you would also have a lot more options. For example, if you're trying to get information, you could offer a bribe, threaten them, ask them nicely, or ask if you could do something for them in exchange. It would also take the NPC's personality into question, so if you were trying to persuade someone to explore a cave with you, and they were reluctant because of the danger involved, you might have the option to either assure them you'll keep them safe, or mock them for being a coward. Depending on the character, one option would work while the other wouldn't. This would actually require you to think about what you're saying, and increase immersion.
As for intimidation, it should be seriously overhauled. In Skyrim, a level 100 player with full daedric armor could talk to someone and be called a "Pathetic milk-drinker". I don't know about you, but if i saw a guy with full daedric armor, i'd respect him. I would change it so your level, equipment, and combat stats would determine how easy it is to intimidate someone, with some people requiring just a few harsh words, and others suicidally trash talking people who can onehit dragons.
Quests
Quests are a huge part of Elder Scrolls games, and they were handled terribly in Skyrim. Most of them were simple "Go to this dungeon and kill the boss to get the thing and bring it back here", and you had no choices at all. Here are some of my ideas to fix this:
First off, There would be a lot more quests that would allow you some more freedom. In Skyrim, you need to follow a very specific chain of events for most quests, such as running through a cave killing things or talking to different people in a certain order. You are required to do each step to complete the quest, so it's basically railroading you. Some quests will offer choices but the choices don't actually have an impact on the quest. I would have it so you often get a goal for a quest, but it's up to you as to how to complete it. So you might have a quest where you need to get a rare piece of jewelry for someone, and they tell you about a place you can steal it from. However, you wouldn't have to steal it, so you could, instead, do something like buy the jewelry(from the guys you can steal it from or elsewhere), sneak into where the jewelry is and steal it, kill everyone who's guarding it and steal it, make friends with it's owner and convince them to give it to you, or even craft one yourself.
Magic
Magic was objectively horrible in Skyrim, and Elder Scrolls 6 definitely needs to completely overhaul the system to make it work.
First off, instead of having so many different 'unique' spells which are just clones of other spells but with different stats(looking at you, icy spear), there would be a bunch of different effects that you could unlock for each spell. So you could start off with a flamethrower type spell, and later unlock an option to charge it up and shoot a single fireball instead, or just repeatedly shoot fireballs as long as the button is held down. So you wouldn't need to unlock one spell that constantly shoots a stream of ice but does very little damage, one spell that charges up and shoots a spike of ice which is your only option for increased damage(so if you want to just shoot a constant stream but actually also deal damage then you're out of luck), another spell that charges up and shoots a spike of ice but does a little more damage, and then a spell that sprays ice like everywhere but deals crap damage and can also hurt you and that's literally almost all the ice spells in the game so you basically only have 3 different options which you're forced to use as you level up.
*ahem*
This way, you would be able to create your own custom spells, like in oblivion. So you could have different effects like constant beam, autofiring projectile(holding the mouse button down constantly shoots, clicking once shoots once), charged projectile(holding the mouse button down charges up damage and releasing shoots once), touch(applies on touching an enemy), self, projectiles from the sky, etc.
Additionally, instead of buying a ton of hardly different spell books, you would be able to unlock new magical abilities by leveling up. So at first you might only have a charged projectile fire spell, but as you level up your magic skills, you would be able to unlock things like constant beam, touch, resistance(to frost, fire, or lightning magic), etc. Spell tomes would instead unlock new types of magic, so a breton or nord might start off with ice magic and have to use a spell tome to unlock fire or lightning. Spell tomes could also automatically unlock a new type of spell, like atronachs or healing, so you would need spell tomes to unlock most magic trees and then you could just upgrade from there by leveling up your magic skill.
There would also be a lot more spell options, like chameleon, speed, cure disease, etc.
Bound armor and weapons would have many different variants as well, but need to be unlocked by finding real versions of the items first. So to have bound daedric armor you would first need to find daedric armor, and then you would be able to summon any weapon or armor you had previously discovered.
Finally, you would be able to choose how powerful your spells are. So you would have a slider in your inventory you could use to adjust how much power you want to use for casting a spell. More power increases the efficacy of the spell, such as damage, duration, etc. but also increases magicka cost. You would also be able to create presets to quickly shift from one spell strength to another, so the 1 key might be bound to a lightning spell that uses only 50% magic power so it's weaker, but it takes less mana, while the 2 key would give you the same spell but with double damage and mana cost.
Misc. and everything else
I would also add a bunch of different small systems that can interact with each other, which would make quests and just general gameplay far more interesting. In Skyrim, there's a quest where you pose as a chef to kill the emperor by poisoning his food. This is the only time in the game you have the option to do this. Instead, i would make it so NPC's would sometimes eat food lying on tables, and you would be able to add potions to different foods. These two mechanics alone would allow you to poison pretty much anyone who eats, get them drunk, or even give them positive effects. You could design quests around this, by having one option for getting information from someone be to get them drunk and interrogate them, or have one where you need to encourage someone to do something dangerous, so you give them a strength potion, etc. Making a bunch of little systems like this would greatly increase immersion and freedom.
So that concludes part 2 of my Elder Scrolls 6 Wishlist. I know it took like a year but hey this is harder than it looks. Any comments or feedback of any kind would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading, and have a nice day!
