Board Thread:Future TES Titles/@comment-44490731-20191124004205

I have been playing Skyrim for the past few years and have come up with a ruleset of which is endlessly enjoyable. I can still find gear upgrades past level 100+, and enemies do not die in one hit. It is because of this it would be nice when starting a game to toggle some features about the game. Things like fast travel, crafting imitations, quest progression speed(cooldown between quest chain activations), trading options could greatly alter a player's meta game. To truely immerse oneself you'll need to play by the rules, and the story will be so much more rewarding because of it.

You may find that restrictive gameplay is much more rewarding than meta optimization. Let us start off with a few rules you can set on yourself.

1. No saving and resetting for things like guard aggro or pickpocket failure. I allow pickpocket mod to 100% for myself to counter this agrivation with a future solution goal but i have to deal with my crimes as they come. All non violent crimes should apply to previous saves. We all know it's easy to make a violent mistake, and this should be a separate optional rule. In contrast a mistake is vastly different from rolling the dice.

2. No crafting your own gear (Armour). You're not allowed to create anything aside from jewelry or weapons at the forge. Everything needs to be found and upgraded. It would be nice to see armor plans drop in game so it's much harder to make best in slot items.

3. Enchanting: you can only enchant weapon enchants and utility armor enchants such as muffled movement or waterbreathing. No enchanting Fortify enchants unless you sacrifice a peerless quality jewelry of that nature. This also plays out nicely if you set limitations to be lore friendly, like your cloak if you're playing with them can only conceal you sneak, provide magic resistance, and the like. The only time you can enchant a fortify piece like +damage to gloves is if you sacrifice a peerless quality enchanted piece of jewelry or the equivalent of the named stature if it doesn't use that terminology. This way you're excited to find the pieces to make your set work. It also allows for a lot of best in slot pieces to hover in your inventory for extended periods of times causing you to hoard and make tough statigic decisions.

4. No enchanting + alchemy on gear. Alchemy / Enchanting ping pong fix. This could be altered by rule 3 if you wish to seek Necklace of Peerless Alchemy. You avoid breaking the game with one shot weapons and have to strategically enchance your chances of survival rather than meta craft immortality.

5. Blacksmiths and alchemy shops can not sell ingredients. I also extend this to not purchase soul gems (filled) or sometimes never buy them either. The lore friendly purpose of this is to think, why would these businesses want to sell you the materials which would hurt their profits? An alchemist wants to sell you potiins, not share wully nilly how to put them out of buisness. -- side note this does not mean you can not steal them from the shop. Sneak around and aquire materials to your hearts content, they restock in time. It also makes stopping by a ore vein worthy of mining.

All these crafting materials should have almost no weight to them. You're not going to mine a pound gold easily, and lose 97% of that making a ring. But in contrast it should take more materials to craft heavier gear. Crafting should be engaging not mindless.

6. Training skills - you can only tain skills from npcs you have helped. And you can not pickpoket the money back that you have trained for. However selling things to them to reaquire the money is acceptable. 6b. Training skills can not be grinded. If you find a way to spam levels you can only train 5 levels per quest or area.

7. No fast travel - optional. But it would be nice to see a setting before you create a character to enable this option to be permanent. Things like teleport spells and carriage rides are acceptable forms of transportation.

8. Quest chain cooldown - the next quest in a quest chain does not activate for 7 days in game. Or two side quest / dungeon completions. I normally only refer to main quest lines like college of winterhold or the Blades quest lines as it's rather unrealistic to become the savior of people of just a couple days. If you follow this rule you'll explore most of the game before completing any of the quest lines.

9. No buying spells from vendors. It is too easy to aquire spells through this manner. Oh i became a God of wizardy with just a few coin? F that. Scower the world for spells and pickpocket / lockpick spells with the daily cooldowns. You'll be suprised how excited you are to get a few highly useful spells. Remember, no farming levels, but you'll max out soon enough and have fun doing it. - in a side note a much more involved spell learning procedure where you have to practice and combine spells sort of like alchemy does with ingredients to empower them, discover them, and train with them would be a sick system to explore. You might even be able to name your own spell creations in such a system. A forceful alteration push and flames? Damn power consuming but you can send your enemies burning over ledges? Leveling up expertise in spells by using them a lot would also be sick.

10. can only buy enchanted weapons or armor in which you have already found in the wild. No more reseting vendors to farm optimal gear or enchant logs. Be excited to find the enchants you want to unlock.

You may also need to restrict the amount of enchants you use, i can get 3 helmets on with my mods but i choose not to, ir only use the black mask for things like waterbreathing as that makes sense.

Using these types of restrictive gameplay turn a game from a quicky bipolar enjoyment ride to a vastly more immersive world with consequence and equal valued rewards. If you choose to play with these rule sets you'll have endless hours of fun.

How to improve the game with possible features:

A hardcore optional selective feature where you get a set amount of lives and one save file. You die enough? You're out. This would also lock your difficulty mode from the start. Goodluck my legendary bros, ill be joining you in sovngarde.

Progressive power system, uncapped levels with diminishing returns. After 100 you don't get 1% boost, maybe .1% and so on. Things un skyrim like unspent dragon souls could boost your power while held.

A power or spell which consumes a dragon soul to give a temperary second life. Perhaps it's just passive and activated upon lethal damage but that would be less immersive. A one week in game timer would be more engaging to have to choose your sacrifice.

Fresh ingredients will boost potion potency. Things like bandit outposts and highwaymen will delay delivery times to cities. When they produce arrives at cities have a voice shout "(fresh) Produce Has Arrived!" If it was delayed it may not be fresh and potion quality at the alchemist may decline. If it's fresh they will be stronger. You picking fresh ingredients will have maximum potency. Some ingredients will have higher potency the longer they rot and are unfresh. Play smart!

Quest cooldowns. Do not let quests be completed so quickly. Give time for events to happen! You may hear from the guards or something that the next quest has been activated. Perhaps you over hear them talking about a cave, and that tells you to talk to a person about it. There isn't just some perpetual problem people need you to solve, the world reacts to you. If you don't deal with a problem after hearing about it maybe it can grow and become worse? 