I have so many opinions on this. Let me count the ways. *deep breath*
(Note that I understand many of these are unrealistic to expect. This is a wish list.)
1) Fast Travel, the compass, food and drink, and realism options
I understand that they added fast travel from anywhere to anywhere you've been to because of constant requests by fans, and I understand that its use is totally optional -- but it presents too great of a temptation. But I miss Morrowind's system whereby you could only fast travel from points that made sense, and you had to get a sense of the routes (silt striders, Mage Guild teleportation, boats, Almsivi/Divine Intervention, etc.)
I have a lot of great memories of adventures in Morrowind where I had to open my journal to read vague directions: follow this path until you reach this landmark, turn this direction and look for this, etc. I ended up on so many spontaneous adventures trying to find the place: it added this sense of immersion and made Vvardenfell seem more real to me in ways that are hard to explain. It also made Vvardenfell, which was certainly much smaller than Oblivion or Skyrim, seem like it was enormous.
Since food and drink are plentiful in the world, I was also an early fan of the idea of making it so that you had to eat, drink, and sleep in order to stay a healthy adventurer. I was much more interested in role playing a character than I was in just going to a destination to fulfill some hollow fetch quest.
I think it would be relatively simple for ES6 to include realism options on character creation: some check boxes you can fill out, like "Restricted Fast Travel" that restricts you to boats, carriages, Mage Guild teleportation, whatever makes sense for the setting. Another option could be "Togglable Compass," which would let you turn off the little icons that appear and/or quest destinations. Sure, it takes a little more writing by the teams to make sure quest givers give you directions when applicable (which would go in a journal, Morrowind style), but again, this is a wish list and I'm just saying what I want. Lastly, it would be easy to add check boxes to require food, drink, and sleep to remain a healthy adventurer.
2) Do not make us the "chosen one" right away
In Morrowind, you eventually find out that you are the Nerevarine, Lord Nerevar reborn, come to fulfill Azura's prophecy. But for the vast majority of the game, you're a nobody: you have to earn your place as the Nerevarine, going so far as to fulfill particular prophetic lines, becoming the Hortator of 3 houses and uniting the Ashlander tribes under your banner. In a roleplaying sense, it was extremely satisfing: you earned that! And it was very satisfying in a roleplaying sense to be a nobody for the early game, which felt appropriate given your level and skills.
In Oblivion, right out the gate you're the Hero of Kvatch (unless you don't go there, but see my next point), and in Skyrim, similarly quickly you're the Dragonborn. This actually frustrated me after how great it felt to carve out fame in Morrowind.
3) Don't push the main quest so much!
I mentioned "unless you didn't go to Kvatch." Similarly, in Skyrim, I guess you can avoid talking to the Jarl of Whiterun. But the game places this huge emphasis that something crazy is going on, and that you need to go to Kvatch or Whiterun right now. It's hard as a roleplayer to justify ignoring the urgency with which the game pitches the main questline at you. Yeah it can be put off for a while, but you really have to ignore the game screaming at you to go do it.
In Morrowind, I really, really liked the fact that once you report to Caius to start the main quest, he takes one look at you and basically tells you to **** off and go get some experience with a guild or freelancing. This encouraged the player to really start to explore and immerse themselves in the world, to forge some kind of identity before their identity is just "The Chosen One."
It's OK to have an epic main quest! Just let newly created characters immerse themselves without making it feel so urgent right away that they feel they have to do it from a roleplaying perspective.
(EDIT: I wanted to add more about this. I feel like if you're forced to carve out a living space for your character first before all the epic stuff starts unfolding, you create an attachment to the world and your place in it. That way when the world is threatened, you actually sort of care! If you're the "chosen one" right out of the gate, it just feels like you're a stranger coming in to save a strange land: even though you spend a lot of time in it, your initial mindset is "I'm here to stop the thing."
If you first have to live as a lowly peon figuring out where their position is in the society, making friendships, making enemies, that sort of thing, THEN the world becomes threatened, it just subjectively seems more compelling! I'd rather start the game asking questions like "who am I, who are my friends, where do I live, what's my profession" than "ok where do I take this artifact of supreme importance or whatever." I get that we can still roleplay in the games that do that, but I feel like the roleplaying is more organic when we first make a "normal" name for ourselves before we make a heroic name for ourselves.)
4) Factions and the "do everything on one character" thing
I understand that from Oblivion on, they reduced the number of joinable factions to try to make each faction a story unto itself; but I've always felt really let down by how this worked out: they were clearly written by different writers, had dubious and varying levels of quality (Oblivion Dark Brotherhood vs. Mage's Guild for instance), and never interacted with other factions much, likely because they were written in a vacuum and tried to avoid breaking other faction quests.
But I miss from Morrowind, there were more than 20 factions, most of which you could join! Many of which had competing interests and actually felt like they lived in the same world and interacted with one another. I want to see factions built more around roleplaying a character, not playing a mini game with a mini story within a game (I am not saying to make their questlines boring, just to shift the emphasis).
It is absolute nonsense that a nonmagical character can go to the Mage's Guild or whatever equivalent and become grandmaster of that guild within a few days by bum rushing the questline! I want to see a return to factions that are mutually exclusive because of politics with high roleplaying value (e.g., Morrowind's Houses, or Tribunal Temple vs. Imperial Cult, etc.), and a return to factions that will only promote you if you exemplify their core values and have attributes and skills that meet their expectations: otherwise you don't advance, you stay at your current rank!
Bring back the politics: yeah, Skyrim had the Civil War, but it felt so straightforward and uncomplicated compared to Morrowind's high-tension Houses, three of which were entire joinable factions. Then there was the tension between the Tribunal Temple and the Imperial Cult, and between Dunmer culture and the Empire in general. It made Vvardenfell feel lived-in, vibrant, and alive, with a history -- even though mechanically it was more primitive than later games, and even though there were barely 2,000 people in the game!
I want a character that has to make choices about allies; and making alliances also makes you enemies. It felt so much more like you could do that in Morrowind as a roleplayer than in any of the following games.
5) Smaller bullet points
(Note that I understand many of these are unrealistic to expect. This is a wish list.)
1) Fast Travel, the compass, food and drink, and realism options
I understand that they added fast travel from anywhere to anywhere you've been to because of constant requests by fans, and I understand that its use is totally optional -- but it presents too great of a temptation. But I miss Morrowind's system whereby you could only fast travel from points that made sense, and you had to get a sense of the routes (silt striders, Mage Guild teleportation, boats, Almsivi/Divine Intervention, etc.)
I have a lot of great memories of adventures in Morrowind where I had to open my journal to read vague directions: follow this path until you reach this landmark, turn this direction and look for this, etc. I ended up on so many spontaneous adventures trying to find the place: it added this sense of immersion and made Vvardenfell seem more real to me in ways that are hard to explain. It also made Vvardenfell, which was certainly much smaller than Oblivion or Skyrim, seem like it was enormous.
Since food and drink are plentiful in the world, I was also an early fan of the idea of making it so that you had to eat, drink, and sleep in order to stay a healthy adventurer. I was much more interested in role playing a character than I was in just going to a destination to fulfill some hollow fetch quest.
I think it would be relatively simple for ES6 to include realism options on character creation: some check boxes you can fill out, like "Restricted Fast Travel" that restricts you to boats, carriages, Mage Guild teleportation, whatever makes sense for the setting. Another option could be "Togglable Compass," which would let you turn off the little icons that appear and/or quest destinations. Sure, it takes a little more writing by the teams to make sure quest givers give you directions when applicable (which would go in a journal, Morrowind style), but again, this is a wish list and I'm just saying what I want. Lastly, it would be easy to add check boxes to require food, drink, and sleep to remain a healthy adventurer.
2) Do not make us the "chosen one" right away
In Morrowind, you eventually find out that you are the Nerevarine, Lord Nerevar reborn, come to fulfill Azura's prophecy. But for the vast majority of the game, you're a nobody: you have to earn your place as the Nerevarine, going so far as to fulfill particular prophetic lines, becoming the Hortator of 3 houses and uniting the Ashlander tribes under your banner. In a roleplaying sense, it was extremely satisfing: you earned that! And it was very satisfying in a roleplaying sense to be a nobody for the early game, which felt appropriate given your level and skills.
In Oblivion, right out the gate you're the Hero of Kvatch (unless you don't go there, but see my next point), and in Skyrim, similarly quickly you're the Dragonborn. This actually frustrated me after how great it felt to carve out fame in Morrowind.
3) Don't push the main quest so much!
I mentioned "unless you didn't go to Kvatch." Similarly, in Skyrim, I guess you can avoid talking to the Jarl of Whiterun. But the game places this huge emphasis that something crazy is going on, and that you need to go to Kvatch or Whiterun right now. It's hard as a roleplayer to justify ignoring the urgency with which the game pitches the main questline at you. Yeah it can be put off for a while, but you really have to ignore the game screaming at you to go do it.
In Morrowind, I really, really liked the fact that once you report to Caius to start the main quest, he takes one look at you and basically tells you to **** off and go get some experience with a guild or freelancing. This encouraged the player to really start to explore and immerse themselves in the world, to forge some kind of identity before their identity is just "The Chosen One."
It's OK to have an epic main quest! Just let newly created characters immerse themselves without making it feel so urgent right away that they feel they have to do it from a roleplaying perspective.
(EDIT: I wanted to add more about this. I feel like if you're forced to carve out a living space for your character first before all the epic stuff starts unfolding, you create an attachment to the world and your place in it. That way when the world is threatened, you actually sort of care! If you're the "chosen one" right out of the gate, it just feels like you're a stranger coming in to save a strange land: even though you spend a lot of time in it, your initial mindset is "I'm here to stop the thing."
If you first have to live as a lowly peon figuring out where their position is in the society, making friendships, making enemies, that sort of thing, THEN the world becomes threatened, it just subjectively seems more compelling! I'd rather start the game asking questions like "who am I, who are my friends, where do I live, what's my profession" than "ok where do I take this artifact of supreme importance or whatever." I get that we can still roleplay in the games that do that, but I feel like the roleplaying is more organic when we first make a "normal" name for ourselves before we make a heroic name for ourselves.)
4) Factions and the "do everything on one character" thing
I understand that from Oblivion on, they reduced the number of joinable factions to try to make each faction a story unto itself; but I've always felt really let down by how this worked out: they were clearly written by different writers, had dubious and varying levels of quality (Oblivion Dark Brotherhood vs. Mage's Guild for instance), and never interacted with other factions much, likely because they were written in a vacuum and tried to avoid breaking other faction quests.
But I miss from Morrowind, there were more than 20 factions, most of which you could join! Many of which had competing interests and actually felt like they lived in the same world and interacted with one another. I want to see factions built more around roleplaying a character, not playing a mini game with a mini story within a game (I am not saying to make their questlines boring, just to shift the emphasis).
It is absolute nonsense that a nonmagical character can go to the Mage's Guild or whatever equivalent and become grandmaster of that guild within a few days by bum rushing the questline! I want to see a return to factions that are mutually exclusive because of politics with high roleplaying value (e.g., Morrowind's Houses, or Tribunal Temple vs. Imperial Cult, etc.), and a return to factions that will only promote you if you exemplify their core values and have attributes and skills that meet their expectations: otherwise you don't advance, you stay at your current rank!
Bring back the politics: yeah, Skyrim had the Civil War, but it felt so straightforward and uncomplicated compared to Morrowind's high-tension Houses, three of which were entire joinable factions. Then there was the tension between the Tribunal Temple and the Imperial Cult, and between Dunmer culture and the Empire in general. It made Vvardenfell feel lived-in, vibrant, and alive, with a history -- even though mechanically it was more primitive than later games, and even though there were barely 2,000 people in the game!
I want a character that has to make choices about allies; and making alliances also makes you enemies. It felt so much more like you could do that in Morrowind as a roleplayer than in any of the following games.
5) Smaller bullet points
- Bring back illegal materials like glass, ebony, skooma, moon sugar for roleplaying purposes: be a smuggler or a drug lord
- Bring back a disposition system that calculates things like your fame/infamy, your prior interactions, your clothes (yes, your clothes: in Morrowind, NPC's would react differently based on how nice or how scummy your clothes were). Make rich people dislike you if you look like a beggar and vice versa for seedy people, etc.
- Stop holding the player's hand! One of the coolest things about the Telvanni was that you couldn't even talk to them if you didn't have a way to Levitate in their towers. It was a cool roleplaying idea. Let's do away with this idea that any character can do anything in the game. Make specializing matter, you can start a new character if you want to do other things!
- More variety! Morrowind had this amazing variety between Imperial architecture and the various regional Dunmer architecture. The Bitter Coast architecture, largely Hlaalu if I remember, looked completely different from Ald'Rhun (Redoran architecture) and Sadrith Mora (Telvanni architecture).
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