Ulfric for High King. No matter his foreign policies, the Imperials wanted me dead for no reason. It was immensely satisfying to slay Tullius, as he lay unable to defend himself.

 

Well, it doesn't quite work like that in Fallout 3. Actually it's kind of the opposite, where when you hit a certain level of good or evil, MORE shit from factions aligned with the opposing morality attacks you. That, and none of the insane shit you can do will change the fact that every two-bit raider armed with a pool cue WILL attack on sight, even if everyone in the goddamn wasteland knows you're a fucking walking arsenal of doom.

It sounds like what Hash is supporting is a system where those pissant enemies that don't have a chance against you know they don't have a chance against you, so they back off. This leaves you free to spend the time it otherwise would have taken to scrape them off the underside of your shoe like the fucking insects they are to instead bask in the glow of how wordlessly intimidating and awesome you are.

 

Indeed. I'm not a games engineer so I'm not sure if this sounds realistic, but perhaps assigning specific infamy numbers to all the NPCs (based on importance to plot, abilities, level, etc...) and having the AI automatically compare it against yours prior to deciding to attack or not? Like if you started the game out with one infamy (which is what most peasant NPCs might have) as a Stormcloak-allied unknown escaped prisoner, and a village guard is five infamy. 5 to 1 is overwhelming in his favor, so he'll attack you if you cause trouble. Later on, that same 5-infamy village guard versus your over 9000-infamy isn't going to do anything besides weakly protest/utter your title or player name in awe/back down and apologize, etc...

 

You'd expect them to adjust for numbers as well... so of course, if there's a massive gulf then 10 guards will still back down, but if you are, say, 15 infamy to one guard's 5, then 7 or 8 guards will still feel safe tackling you. Adjusted on the fly as you strike them down, of course.

Which makes the whole concept seem just that much more complicated.

 

Is it, though? I've seen similar programs in Assassin's Creed and Witcher 2. Assassin's Creed has guards flee if you kill enough of them quickly enough, while a Let's Play of Witcher 2 saw guards flee when hit with a magical version of Force Push. Not to mention morale in Total War games gets bolstered by commander units effects...

 

Hmm, good point. I forgot about AC, it does have a good system set up in that regard. But AC doesn't really take into account persistently rising infamy of any sort, does it? It just adjusts opponent morale for that one fight, even if you've slaughtered the guards literally everywhere else.

 

Good idea, but why would every NPC in the game know exactly how famous you are? I mean, there are separate bounties for each hold, which implies there isn't much information sharing going on. How would you explain everyone knowing you on sight? Think about it: if your character had done a couple of the guild questlines, you'd expect people to have heard of you, but it's doubtful they've ever seen you before, let alone be able to recognise you as the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood.

What you want to add seems to be similar to the Fame/Infamy system in Oblivion. When you did good deeds, your fame would increase, and people's disposition towards you would increase. When you committed crimes, your infamy would go up, and law-abiding citizens' disposition would drop. If disposition dropped far enough, they'd attack you.

With the removal of Speechcraft, disposition is now irrelevant, but there's a chance that there's still some references to it in the Construction Set.

 

Have to agree with you there. Heck, a huge chunk of the Dark Brotherhood's questline in Oblivion centered around the fact that only a very small number of people within the Dark Brotherhood actually knew the Listener's identity.

In the pre-TV and photography age, recognizing any complete stranger just by sight is pretty close to impossible, especially for the average peasant/townsman who wouldn't have access to information more reliable than the rumors spreading around at the local tavern.

 

Word of Mouth, aka gossip and rumor-mongering works just fine. We're talking about the Dovahkiin, possibly the most badass warrior to come to Skyrim since Talos himself. No way he's accomplishing all his deeds without anybody talking about them. Especially when you count missions for Jarls or the Imperials that is bound to make you stand out, or you taking on DRAGONS.

Your feats being spread across Skyrim is how they know you. This is why I'm talking about this infamy system. You're accomplishing epic things with little to nothing to show for it in terms of respect, when logically your accomplishments should be talked about in bars and knitting circles across Skyrim. You join a guild? You do realize you interact with guild members right? They're going to see your face, talk to you, maybe even work missions with you (gameplay/plot segregation here). There is literally no reason you shouldn't be seen as the next coming of Talos by the end of the game.

But the point of how everyone in Skyrim will know has some merit. I hesitate to make this more complicated, but I'll take this from a wrestling simulator game I play called TEW 2010. Basically, you build a wrestler's popularity in a region. At certain thresholds (17.1%, 29 %, 43%, etc...) spillover occurs and he gains popularity in nearby regions. Adapt that to this infamy meter. Have his infamy be region-based (perhaps based on the territories each Jarl and the Imperials rule?), with spillover boosting him over in other regions along with deeds done in those regions.


*shrugs* Maybe I'm getting too attached to the concept...

 

I'm perfectly happy saving the world and not taking credit or looking for fame and respect.

I'm a true hero.

 

No, it's a pretty good concept. Obviously, things like beating the DB questline would be more low-key, but, again, word of mouth would help there. And things like becoming head of the Companions, being thane of a ton of places, being the goddamn Dovahkiin - those things should certainly net you a fair amount of fame.

Perhaps have it gradually increase to catch up. E.g. you have a fame meter, which denotes your current fame, and if you do something awesome, it increases - not immediately, but gradually, in increments over the next 48 hours or something. And maybe a small decrease if there hasn't been an increase over time.

 

I didn't spend 150~hours in oblivion just to let the empire fall. D:

 

Way I see it is this:

After the Oblivion Crisis, Empire is left in a mess. Septim line of emperors is dead. The interregnum is pretty significant and the Empire isn't able to do much against the Summerset Isles forming the 2nd Aldmeri Dominion. Then, boom, both Valenwood and Elseweyr gone soon after, thanks to manipulations by the Dominion.

For the next century and a half, the Empire struggles on, replacing the Septime dynasty with a new stock of emperors. Then, the Dominion shows up, issues its ultimatum on 4E 171, wipes out the Blades, and cues up the Great War. Empire suffers massive losses and loses a good portion of Hammerfell de facto to the Dominion. They wipe out a major portion of the Dominion in the Battle of the Red Ring and sue for peace, accepting most of the terms the Dominion had issued at the outset of the war.

Talos worship is banned and Dominion agents run freely through the Empire. Hammerfell is pissed off that the Empire caves in and secedes, and manages to win their own rebellion against the Dominion.

Now, cue up 4E 201, and Ulfric is starting up his rebellion against the Empire. He accuses the Empire of bending over to the Thalmor and of denying Talos. Here's the problem I had with that.

When the Empire accepted the White-Gold Concordat, they were no longer truly the Empire of Tamriel. They had lost Valenwood, Elseweyr, and the Summerset Isles. They had just come out of losing the Septim dynasty and reconstructing after the Oblivion Crisis. Vvardenfell had just literally blown up and what was left of Morrowind was overrun by the Black Marsh. The Empire was essentially under attack by nearly three fronts. After the Battle of Red Ring, Titus Mede II realized that it was simply impossible for the Empire to continue.

The White Gold Concordat was chosen as a way to let the Empire rest and recover and live to fight another day. Nothing more, nothing less. Both sides were more than aware that the current diplomatic relations were a sham and both sides were simply jockeying to regain power and prepare for the 2nd Great War.

This meant some significant concessions if the remnant of Talos' Empire was going to survive. This meant giving up Hammerfell. This meant denouncing Talos worship. One has to understand, by this time, the Empire is essentially reduced to Cyrodiil, Skyrim, and High Rock. Morrowind is a wasteland and doesn't really count. Black Marsh and Hammerfell are now independent entities. And Aldmeri Dominion owns the rest with the Summerset Isles, Valenwood, and Elseweyr.

Titus Mede II was forced to make a decision that would allow his Empire to survive and fight again. Without conceding to the White Gold Concordat, there probably wouldn't be an Empire by 4E 201.

So now, the Empire is attempting to re-consolidate its power. My understanding is that the Empire allowed Talos worship de facto, except merely privately. They made no effort to seek out Talos worshippers and all was fine and good until Ulfric Stormcloak made a mess of everything with the Markarth Incident. Then, the Dominion gets extremely interested in Skyrim and sets up a Thalmor Embassy and increases Thalmor patrol of the region. Until Stormcloak had drawn attention to Talos worship, the Thalmor would have likely continued on, oblivious. It isn't exactly easy to enforce a law that says you can't worship said god (How would one know where to look if everyone is just worshiping privately?), until Stormcloak threw away the veil.

Then Stormcloak has his rebellion and everything goes to hell. The Empire has spent the last 30+ years trying to regain their power and prepare for the 2nd Great War, NOT deal with a rebellion sweeping across Skyrim. The infighting only weakens both Skyrim and the Empire in general. As the Thalmor note, this is perhaps the best thing that could have happened for them.

Ulric Stormcloak is too myopic to see the bigger picture. The Empire never intended the Talos ban to be permanent because they very much plan to kick the Thalmor's ass in the future. The best chance Man has against the Thalmor is precisely the Empire and Stormcloak is trying to muck that up now. Worst case scenario, Stormcloak manages to win a significantly weakened Skyrim. The Thalmor swoop in and conquer Skyrim, which won't be able to sustain TWO wars back to back.

Throw in the fact that Ulfric actively alienates non-Nordic peoples, therefore cutting off support from other nations, especially Hammerfell which won't be too keen to help someone who makes clear that Skyrim is for the Nords, and Nords only. Add the fact that Ulfric clearly states that any Jarl with him is against him, cementing his status as an idiotic, myopic child who somehow got stuck with the task of running a city and is now conducting a war against the Empire that harms the cause of Men entirely. This is a guy who's proven so detrimental to everyone to the extent that the Thalmor consider him an asset, is an enormous racist bastard, and is generally terrible at diplomacy and has no trouble apparently killing off anyone who doesn't explicitly support him...

So yeah. Fuck Stormcloaks. Empire all the way.

 

As far as I know, the closest you can get to that is

Spoiler

helping them escape Cidhna Mine here.

 

I have to admit I take great great pleasure in brutally slaughtering every member of the forsworn I come across.

 

^This

I like playing what I call Lightning Basketball with them, aim it right and charge a double cast Thunderbolt at them and you can send them blasting away Team Rocket style so its kind of fun to see if I can pop them through the top doorway of a temple from the bottom.

 

I do something similar with Chain Lightening. At 100 destruction, it instantly propels three people into the air simultaneously. :3

 

Lmao thats actually what I used to use for it but somehow I'd always end up flash frying my follower when I used it and even after I started console setting them to essential it got endlessly irritating listening to them bitch. I actually tried using Lightning Storm for this after I got it but that spell is so retardedly powerful that I literally vaporize everything I hit with it in a handful of seconds maximum. It kicks fourteen kinds of ass for fighting Trolls and Dragons but it just sucks the fun out of it for me fighting anything else with it because it works so damned well. I can just sweep the beam across a castle wall and vaporize everything on it in an eyeblink even if they're using wards. Its also a fairly similar situation with Blizzard, while very fun to use it makes things absurdly easy for fighting multiple enemies in closer quarters, not only do they get mountains of frost damage and paralyzed but they get beaten to death by the hurricane of debris it sucks up from the surrounding area and to top it off the instant they die it just picks their corpse up too and smashes it into anyone left standing.