What should Elder Scrolls 6 prioritize to capture the essence of Skyrim?
# Prioritize the Core Gameplay Loop
– Explore
– Fight
– Loot
– Sell
– Repeat
# Eliminate Settlement System
– Settlements disrupt core gameplay loop
– Lack narrative relevance
– Disrupt exploration flow
# Learning from Fallout 76 and Starfield
– Fallout 76’s emphasis on base-building did not resonate well with players
– Starfield’s feature overload led to diluted core gameplay experience
# Focus on What Makes Games Fun
– Elden Ring, The Witcher 3, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Skyrim became hits without base-building
– Prioritize combat encounters, landscapes, dungeons, loot, enemies, and NPCs for TES:VI
Does Elder Scrolls 6 need to ditch the settlement system to focus on enjoyable gameplay elements like Skyrim did?
The settlement system in FO4 is WHY I love FO4 and have trouble going back to skyrim.
Nah they need to focus on what made Oblivion fun. Good quests
I don’t enjoy it
But it’s optional, so not a big deal
I think they are trying to make their games appeal to “everyone” and lots of people allegedly don’t like classic rpg stuff. They’ve been streamlining out features to expand on side stuff. That’s what I see anyway, I didn’t play star field because I was super let down by fallout 4.
I don’t think the next ES game is for me if they cut out rpg stuff in favor of base building or other features I would consider superfluous. I’d be delighted if they took ideas from New Vegas and implement them in their rpgs. I liked skyrim but the nord vs empire conflict was as inconsequential as each of the factions in fallout 4.
I really enjoyed the base building in FO4, would love to see it in ES6 too.
I spent a lot of time in Skyrim upgrading my house and decorating how I could, so improvements on that sound good to me
Fallout 76 is still massively popular, and getting more popular. Part of that is due to the base building system. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
I built like one or two settlements in FO4 and then ignored the system except as another shop and later some light modding.
I agree, it takes away from the core loop. I didn’t mind the mods where you let the survivors build their own settlements as you provide resources. That felt more in tune with the theme of conquering the wasteland.
I think this is my problem with modern games, you tend to have to do every damn thing. The world sits still until you bother with some boring mini game or half baked idea.
I just hope the game is good, period. Starfield has me reaaaaally questioning Bethesdas ability to make a decent game now. Some of their mechanics are still straight out of 2007
Player-made ***SETTLEMENTS*** don’t make sense for Elder Scrolls imo, but they should keep that building system for player ***HOUSING***.
It’s a fantastic level of customization that their previous games sorely lacked. It wasn’t fun having your own home, but it not really being customizable. Even Hearthfire had pre-placed furniture and heavy restrictions on what rooms you could build (some were mutually exclusive).
Not just for furniture either, I like being able to add additional rooms or craft a worshop shed out behind my house.
The settlement system is one of the few things I’ve enjoyed about Fallout 4.. I want a shivering isles level quest that people are always excited about. The whole “go here and kill that” or “go there and find grab this” quests get so old..
My expectations are non-existent. I don’t expect anything. I’ll be surprised if it runs well and doesn’t have bugs out the wazoo. I’ll be even more surprised if it actually releases this decade.
I loved the settlement system and would be very dissapointed if it was cut from future Bethesda-games. Designing my own farm, with fences and walls around it and chests inside my farmhouse, is something I really hope to do in TES6 after travelling and adventuring – a place where my favourite companions can live and where I can store all my gear and treasure. Just make it optional and cut the part from FO4 where you would need to rush to defend them all the time.
It should also allow you to clip through stuff when you are in placement mode (without needing mods). FO4 was too picky on where you could place walls and so on.
Interesting take I didn’t quite see it the same way. Bethesda love having interactable props (candle sticks, desk fans, plates) in their games. However usually this is just inventory junk i drop on the ground worth 1 gold. Fallout turned it into usable material that I had to factor into my scavenging in the wasteland. This played very well (imo) into the post apocalyptic feel when people are shooting at you with home made guns and you just need one more screw to put on a suppressor. It was accessible instantly with a few perks to improve it later in the game.
Starfield tried to do something similar but still had a ton of unusable props and made you buy/mine the stuff you actually needed and also locked a lot of the settlement stuff behind levels/perks which meant I played through twice before touching it and then never really used it. It did however again imo have some pretty good questlines even if the land scape was barren.
Elder scrolls could do something like it, I always enjoyed building my house and modding in various things to do so. In fact in ES and fallout I can see settlements fitting in a lot better than starfield! It has the potential to give factions some real weight and ground presence like fallout 4 did. I would just want it to be done right.
One of the largest issues with settlements for me was that Bethesda never has a very intuitive storage system. Skyrim always had better mods for this than Fallout. One of the major things I did with my F4 settlement was just barricade up red rocket and use the garage door to have a cosy apocalypse base and it *really* immersed me!
I think this is an important take but I also have a lot of fun with both F04 and Starfield settlements. So much so that most of my time has been spent on side-quests and base-building and I haven’t finished the main stories of either game and got both at launch.
Skyrim was supposed to have a “settlement” system where you helped out and built up the various mills around Skyrim.
I disagree, I’d say they’ve fully established a useful system fort the fight – loot parts so reuse that, and the explore part is 90% of what made tes an fo games great, so taking the “sell” part and tying it into settlement construction is great, I want more of it, I want to be the king of a new province in the empire that I carve out in epic battles as I build my humble tent into a new empire with glass bottles, clay, logistic resources and grand fights solo or with my army I’ve built from Lydia lookalikes and gear stolen from the blades and telmari foes I’ve crushed
Just give me the ability to decorate the interior of my house and i’m happy. It really doesn’t need to go beyond that.
Scavenging was one of my favorite parts of Fallout 4. It gave me a reason to delve into the different buildings/dungeons and made me carefully inspect the environment for things I was on the lookout for. In essence, it IS part of the gameplay loop of Explore > Fight > Loot > Sell. The idea of going out to a location, exploring it, clearing it out, and bringing the loot back to my customizable base is what set Fallout 4’s gameplay loop apart, from say something like the Assassin’s Creed games that have a similar Explore > Fight > Loot > Sell loop (yes I know they are vastly different games).
I don’t think Starfield’s “scavenge the things and build things with them” loop was executed very well, but I think other parts of that game messed with that loop. Give me a Skyrim-esque setting, with a fort-building or camp-building option, with the scavenging mechanics of Fallout 4 and I’ll be a happy camper 🙂
They just need to make the game.
I thought settlements were a great part of fo4, particularly in the context of the minutemen. It was cool to be a part of rebuilding, defending, and managing the communities in the wasteland. I also liked that you could get into it as much or as little as you want, and I don’t think the rest of the game suffered as a result. As a point of comparison, I never did any ship or settlement building in Starfield.
I don’t think settlements would make sense in a Skyrim-like game, but I am open to it as part of ES6 depending on the nature of the game. That said, I don’t want settlements to be a part of Bethesda games by default.
While everything you said is good and well I would kill for the ability to build my own little town that can get raided by raiders and other things from elder scrolls lore. Have my own little black smith I can hire to make me swords and my own mage to enchant my stuff while I feed them materials and other things. Sounds fucking sick to me
I just want to say: Most people don’t want Fallout 76 to be a single player focused game. They just want a single player focused Fallout. There are people who believe it or not enjoy the multiplayer wasteland experience. Just because you do not doesn’t mean you want a game designed for it to be single player. Instead just say you want a new ducking fallout game instead.
we’re 100% getting base building in TESVI and will likely get ship building/sailing/boarding/etc. as well
It makes sense in fallout, for elder scroll I want an updated version of what skyrim had an build/buy/earn and then customize a house
The only way I would disagree with you is if they made it narratively relevant. In Fallout the settlements would hit a lot differently if it was relevant to the ending. For example, if it ended with a big ass showdown where the institute attacks your main settlement, or if the settlers joined you for the final raid of the institute.
If they want to make it good in the Elder scrolls you would need to focus the entire narrative of the game around it. For instance, if the story is centred on you building up a community of outcasts in the desert it could absolutely be a very satisfying part of the game.
With the Sims Settlement mod the settlements became one of my favourite parts of the game. I hope they expand it.
I just want morrowind/oblivion with modern graphics and more lore. But we all know they are just pandering and will create something the existing player base doesn’t want.
I think Starfield proved that Bethesda has no idea what it wants to do with the settlement system.
In fallout, Settlements could be fun, but were clearly content tacked on near the end. They didn’t integrate into the rest of the game at all well, and aside from the joy of designing your own place, there were few rewards to investing deeply in settlement making.
In Starfield, they designed the system with the bones of the settlement system in place, but came up with even LESS reason to engage in building them, while simultaneously nerfing the hell out of the variety and creativity that it could be used with. The end result was a total waste of time for players and designers alike.
At this point, they need to just drop the system. They obviously have no clue what to do with the concept or how to make it fun.
I always liked having and setting up my house in Skyrim, and I always wanted to do even more with it. I do like the settlement system in FO4 though it can get a bit extra at times. I would be totally fine with only a single base/settlement location in the next Elder Scrolls game, but having more options for customization and building would be nice rather than having a few cookie cutter extensions you can add on to your house.
And miss out on a possible mod like Sim Settlements 2? We could have an Elder Scrolls version come to fruition in ES6
ES6 needs to do something that worked for skyrim.
Actually coming the fuck out.
FFS we are getting to the 5th year anniversary of the announcement, and at best right now we have… a screenshot.
Honestly if there was a better focus and reason for settlements it would work.
The issue is settlements, as I saw them, was that you were doing all the work and it just had other people existing in the little world you had created. It wasn’t alive or vibrant.
If every time you left and came back, something new was going on That would be really cool and interesting.
Maybe they’re getting together for a feast, maybe they are harvesting crops that they had planted earlier, maybe somebody opened up a shop somewhere and now you can buy stuff that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
In fallout 4, there was literally no reason to even have a settlement because it was just more work for you. If you were actually creating a dynamic world and setting people free in it, that would be really cool.
Even if they come out with the game, you know it’ll just be shit.
The good devs left for better companies and you’re left with the trash. Stanfield as an example .
Obviously, other things like questing, combat, and handcrafted environments are key to TES 6, but they aren’t a small company where they can only focus on a few things and not be ambitious. It’s been so long since Skyrim that if a settlement system (and given the direction Bethesda wants to go with open world crafting) isn’t as good as something like Medieval Dynasty made by a small company, it would be a shame.
I honestly don’t believe Bethesda is capable of making good games now….. we’ve always accepted the bank of their games, but the writing / world building has gotten much worse.
There are so many studios that have the exact same issues, Blizzard & Bioware being 2 other main ones to mention. They were also great back in the day but both of them are miles away from their former glory days.
Every Dev needs to go back to making things fun. But they won’t. Too many skins to sell and micro transactions to focus on
The Elder Scrolls 6 needs to ditch the Todd Howard Management and focus on what made Morrowind fun
I miss the ‘settlement’ system in Morrowwind. I remember the wizard faction had the plant-towers and you could rise to the top of the faction, get your own tower-sprout and then watch your tower grow as time in game passed.
Loved that.
But another village needs our help!
Here’s the thing; I like building settlements because I like city builder and simulation games, but if it doesn’t provide a useful purpose in game that lines up with the amount of time it takes to get into it, it’ll just be a gimmick.
I wouldn’t mind a settlement system if it weren’t 100% custom. Like how you can upgrade your house but instead they give you a plot of land. Then you can upgrade to a farm or keep or whatever but not actually build it yourself. Just drop some gold and get a nicer place automatically configured.
Fallout 4’s best thing was the modding of gun and armor paired with the exploration (which is Bethesdas main appeal, that’s why Starfield is so lame).