What would you do to make Skyrim less soulless?

[LibraryOgre]

LOL, totally. The one that tilts me the most is the 'Is that fur? Coming out of your ears?' after I've gone and cured myself of lycanthropy. I've got the ability to raise the dead and make a house out of nails and wood, you'd think that operating a pair of tweezers isn't beyond my ken.

Then, there are the people amazed that a Khajiit has fur coming out of his ears.

[VoxRationis]

The one sort of crafting I'd be really interested in games exploring more is crafting based on some level of simulation of actually making objects.
...
The game could give you a 3D template of what you need to make, and your job is to hammer the material to be as close to that template as possible, then grind to final form and heat treat. The closer you get to the correct shape, the better the item's stats.

Now your sword is, in fact, your sword, it relies on your actual mastery of game systems (also potentially skill point investments). Sure you probably don't want to craft 100 of the damn things, but you really shouldn't need to. For one thing you could still buy items, or hire a smith to make the sword for you, and there's no reason except for a need to produce a timesink that leveling up your crafting should require making 100 things in the first place. And maybe only the player can make some super-epic extra powerful endgame weapons, but doing so is now satisfying and a bit tense because you can actually make a mistake and lose all your work.

This is an interesting idea, and I think it work a lot better in theory than the existing smithing system, which makes you feel more like a quartermaster for the Han army than a master smith in the Viking age. But in order for it to work, I think that it would have to be strangely more precise in its implementation than any other system (except for, perhaps, lockpicking, which also relies on a certain deft touch). Mages don't have to carefully balance the arcane forces of magic before letting loose a fireball, and attack animations are far from precise.

[Morty]

Yeah, I can get behind no crafting at all, ever. I mean, I guess crafting in Skyrim was useful for me because I could craft all the weapons and armor I'd modded in - otherwise I'd have to wear the eyesores that pass for light armor in that game. Which is generally the one legitimate strength of crafting - we don't have to rely on RNG or the designers' mercy when it comes to getting the stuff we want. Or, rather, that's what ideally happens, because we can still be a their mercy for ingredients.

That said, when Skyrim introduced more elaborate crafting, it combined awfully with its "level by using" system, leading to the endless grind of making trash items to level it up. I don't think crafting can coexist with that in any remotely enjoyable way. I mean, the whole "level by using" thing is maybe not workable in general, but it's worse for crafting.

[warty goblin]

This is an interesting idea, and I think it work a lot better in theory than the existing smithing system, which makes you feel more like a quartermaster for the Han army than a master smith in the Viking age. But in order for it to work, I think that it would have to be strangely more precise in its implementation than any other system (except for, perhaps, lockpicking, which also relies on a certain deft touch). Mages don't have to carefully balance the arcane forces of magic before letting loose a fireball, and attack animations are far from precise.

I mean yeah, it would require some level of precise control. But I don't think it'd have to require much if any more precision than the ranged attacks already do. You could have a perfectly functional blacksmithing simulation based on controlling the impact location and power of each hit, which is basically archery right there, 'cept your target won't be 50 feet away, moving, and trying to set you on fire. At worst you take too long, the metal cools down too much, and you need to burn some more fuel to heat it back up.

(Also, dear lord do the combat controls need to be tighter. Because they are terrible and flaily)

[Aeson]

I mean yeah, it would require some level of precise control. But I don't think it'd have to require much if any more precision than the ranged attacks already do. You could have a perfectly functional blacksmithing simulation based on controlling the impact location and power of each hit, which is basically archery right there, 'cept your target won't be 50 feet away, moving, and trying to set you on fire. At worst you take too long, the metal cools down too much, and you need to burn some more fuel to heat it back up.

(Also, dear lord do the combat controls need to be tighter. Because they are terrible and flaily)

What you describe essentially turns crafting into a minigame which divorces in-game results from in-game skills by replacing a character-skill check with a player-skill check, and this is not a good thing for a skill-based RPG, because it tends to make the character skills irrelevant - consider the lockpicking minigames. If you, the player, are good at the lockpicking minigames in Oblivion and Skyrim, then your character's Security or Lockpicking skill is largely irrelevant - you can open pretty much any pickable lock in the game whether your character's skill is 5 or 100 in only a few attempts, and higher skill levels are merely a convenience. If you, the player, are bad at the lockpicking minigames, then your character's Security or Lockpicking skill is still largely irrelevant, because even with a completely maxed Security or Lockpicking skill you're still not going to open even low-end locks without a great many failed attempts. I'm not going to defend Morrowind's lockpicking system as fun, engaging, or thrilling gameplay, but the minigames in Oblivion and Skyrim aren't an improvement.

Also, in my opinion, minigames are, generally speaking, a blight upon the face of video games. If I'm playing KotOR, it's not because I want to play a Blackjack variant or Sci-Fi Bike Race Simulator, it's because I want to screw around pretending to be a Jedi or Sith or whatever. If I'm playing Combat Flight Simulator: European Theater, it isn't because I want to pretend to storm the beaches of Normandy as an infantryman, it's because I want to pretend to be a fighter ace. Some variability in gameplay is reasonable to keep things interesting, and a quick, well-implemented minigame can be okay, but too much and your game loses focus and becomes a mishmash of shallow systems that tries to do everything in one package and ends up doing nothing well. Involved or convoluted crafting systems belong in games whose crafting systems are core features, but not in games where crafting is at best a secondary activity. If you want to play Blacksmith Simulator, then by all means play Blacksmith Simulator. TES games, however, are not Blacksmith Simulator; they're Fantasy (or Legendary, Mythic, or Epic) Hero Simulator.

[The_Jackal]

That would violate the first commandment of Skyrim, which is "thou shalt not prevent the player from accessing anything." There are only a handful of places in the entire game where you're allowed to commit to something, and those moments are required to carry big red warning stickers in nine languages to tell the player that they're restricting their freedom.

The trouble with that is, freedom without consequences is the very essence of soullessness. And that's what Skyrim gives you.

That's fair, but I've always felt that what Elder Scrolls games have promised, above and beyond, "You can do anything" is "Immersion". They don't have to make the redemption of your character impossible, if you've screwed up, they just need to make it difficult to undo what you have done. There's already some of that in Skyrim today. If you accept the contract to kill Anoriath, for example, his brother Elrindir stays pissed off at you for the rest of the game (even if you kill Anoriath in perfect secrecy). The problem is that the only force and effect of that consequence is a snarky remark every time you visit his tavern.

So, yeah, I like consequences, I don't think that freedom and consequences are mutually exclusive, in fact I'd argue that freedom without consequences isn't really freedom, because your choices can't actually mean anything.

Ways In Which Voiced Dialogue Has Wrecked Gaming, #14. You can't have a city that's deathly silent, especially if it was ringing with voices on your first visit. And you can't write and record an infinite supply of inconsequential background chitchat. So what's the alternative? Endless repetition.

I have yet to encounter a good answer to this problem, except "don't have voiced dialogue".

In general I'm inclined to agree. That's not to say I want them to backtrack all voiced dialogue, but I think the unsolicited chat is counterproductive.

Mount & Blade's solution was a stock audio file of a busy market. It works well.

Yes. That.

I'm not a fan of an upgrades-only crafting system. Such a scheme got a little bizarre in Fallout 4, and I don't see it working much better for items like swords, for instance (which don't even have replaceable parts).

Me too. Feels incomplete.

Why does the game need crafting at all? I mean Oblivion didn't really feel like it's missing anything by not having a system where you spent forever hammering out a zillion iron daggers or whatever. Granted some of this is my view that crafting in videogames generally combines the thrill of a grocery list with the raw, visceral excitement of watching a loading screen inside a spreadsheet, but what does it really add to the game? Another way to make your numbers higher I suppose, but it's not like the crafted items are any more satisfying to use or give me a unique sense of ownership or anything.

I've never had problems with a crafting system, it's the gathering systems that are usually where the wheels come off the wagon. I didn't go into the adventuring gig to work the face of an iron mine. I think the 'kill, loot, return' motif works well, when you're doing it right. The idea is that building things should be fun and useful, and the need for raw materials should push you into dangerous fun. Some of my favorite gaming times ever was prowling Runnyeye Citadel in Everquest with my Shadow Knight, killing goblins for iron ore. Where I totally agree with you is where you're forced to do a lot of mind numbing repetition to 'level up'. That's what I think Fallout IV did right with their crafting. No grinding, just get the perk and the parts, and make the thing. At least, if you're going to make me repeat stuff, then for heaven's sake, give me a build queue so I can go afk while my input materials get consumed.

[Mechalich]

In general I'm inclined to agree. That's not to say I want them to backtrack all voiced dialogue, but I think the unsolicited chat is counterproductive.

I actually like the approach Persona 5 took - which is to have generalized background murmuring that may change in tone or volume depending on place or time. I think a slightly more in-depth system based on weaving human voice into the ambient sound could promote the feel better than having specific NPCs spout random one-liners.

[Rynjin]

Immersive Sounds: Cities does that and it's greatly increased my immersion in towns.

[Knaight]

I mean yeah, it would require some level of precise control. But I don't think it'd have to require much if any more precision than the ranged attacks already do. You could have a perfectly functional blacksmithing simulation based on controlling the impact location and power of each hit, which is basically archery right there, 'cept your target won't be 50 feet away, moving, and trying to set you on fire. At worst you take too long, the metal cools down too much, and you need to burn some more fuel to heat it back up.

What you describe essentially turns crafting into a minigame which divorces in-game results from in-game skills by replacing a character-skill check with a player-skill check, and this is not a good thing for a skill-based RPG, because it tends to make the character skills irrelevant - consider the lockpicking minigames. If you, the player, are good at the lockpicking minigames in Oblivion and Skyrim, then your character's Security or Lockpicking skill is largely irrelevant - you can open pretty much any pickable lock in the game whether your character's skill is 5 or 100 in only a few attempts, and higher skill levels are merely a convenience.

Let's talk about a little game by the name of Rune Factory Frontier. It has a very simple craft system, but one that does at least add a little beyond just putting the items together and waiting. Instead, whenever you craft something you have a bar and a pointer that moves back and forth along it, which stops when you hit a button. The outside of the bar is a failure, the middle a success, and a tiny section at the border (and thus risky to try) a critical success that makes the item better. Your character skill determines the size of this middle section and its borders, from success at all taking really good timing to being able to critically succeed on larger bar sections. More complex equipment is also harder to make. In addition there's also stuff built of other stuff which can cause this to cascade.

Now consider Skyrim. Something as overtly gamey as that bar might not work well (the aesthetics are very different), but something like a timed quench system for swords where you watch the color and hit quench at the right time could work fine, where improved character skill makes it more forgiving could work just fine. Or you could use something like that bar but mess with the style a bit to fit the aesthetic, and instead of having big discrete sections use a gradient system where you go down once, try to hit the hot point(s) as well as you can, and get a wider central section that gives you more leeway to miss slightly without being downright terrible. Character and player skill thus both matter, but it's still a fairly simple and fast minigame (on the order of a second) that doesn't take too much focus away.

[Aeson]

Let's talk about a little game by the name of Rune Factory Frontier. It has a very simple craft system, but one that does at least add a little beyond just putting the items together and waiting. Instead, whenever you craft something you have a bar and a pointer that moves back and forth along it, which stops when you hit a button. The outside of the bar is a failure, the middle a success, and a tiny section at the border (and thus risky to try) a critical success that makes the item better. Your character skill determines the size of this middle section and its borders, from success at all taking really good timing to being able to critically succeed on larger bar sections. More complex equipment is also harder to make. In addition there's also stuff built of other stuff which can cause this to cascade.

Firstly, that's essentially the same as the lockpicking minigames in Oblivion and Skyrim, just with different graphics.

Secondly, that's a player-skill check, not a character-skill check. If you have the reflexes for that kind of thing, then boosting up the related skill is merely a convenience; if you don't have the reflexes for that kind of thing, then the crafting system and related skills are hardly worth interacting with because it's not like you're ever going to get anything better than a passable result from it unless the governing character-skill trivializes the reflex check.

Thirdly, stupid minigames like that are exactly the kind of thing that I think of when I say that minigames are a blight on the face of video gaming. If I'm playing a heroic fantasy adventure simulator like Skyrim, then pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey is exactly the kind of thing that the crafting system should not involve. It's completely unrelated to the rest of the game, wastes time that I could instead be spending playing the part of the game that I was actually interested in playing as evidenced by my decision to launch Heroic Fantasy Adventure Simulator instead of Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey Simulator.

Fourthly, the system you describe strikes me as a rather self-defeating system. Your reward for developing the character-skill governing the minigame is that you'll need to waste less time on the minigame in the future. Why not just not include the minigame in the first place, if you're implicitly acknowledging that it's a waste of time anyways?

I'd far sooner see Smithing skill progression go towards more of a craft-a-masterwork-to-advance kind of system than to a minigame. Advancing from skill level x to skill level x+1 every time you craft a new type of item may arguably not fit the learn-by-doing model quite as well as crafting f(x) items, but it's a hell of a lot less tedious and doesn't encourage the player to sit around for an hour or two turning a pile of iron ore into a pile of iron daggers so that they can suddenly make themselves a set of dragonbone armor with all that Smithing knowledge they learned from forging iron daggers, and with level-scaled loot, level-scaled vendor inventories, and perk requirements for crafting certain types of items it's probably also not any less balanced.

[Knaight]

Fourthly, the system you describe strikes me as a rather self-defeating system. Your reward for developing the character-skill governing the minigame is that you'll need to waste less time on the minigame in the future. Why not just not include the minigame in the first place, if you're implicitly acknowledging that it's a waste of time anyways?

Your reward is that you can do it more easily, more reliably, and that you can move on to harder recipes. That said the game in question is very focused on crafting, farming (in the sense of crops), etc. The minigame thus feeds into this as a matter of efficiency, which is far more relevant there than in Skyrim (what with the absence of timers).

[factotum]

I'm with Aeson here. Stuff like the lockpicking minigame in Skyrim (and the minigame you're talking about is a very similar idea, Knaight) are more reliant on the player's twitch skills than they are on the in-game character's skill, and that's not great in a CRPG. As he points out, there is really never any point in putting any points into lockpicking perks in Skyrim--lockpicks are not in short supply and the minigame is not difficult, so you can generally open any lock you like given a bit of time and effort. It's also notable that there isn't any equivalent minigame for any other skill in the game, so it feels like a bit of a pointless distraction--which is quite important when we're discussing how to make the game feel less soulless and more realistic.

[veti]

Smithing is thematically appropriate to Skyrim. Smiths were very important in Nordic culture, seen as vaguely supernatural in their own right. A proper Norse hero was one who could make his own sword. In mythology, the master smiths were pretty much indistinguishable from magic-users, because the ability to work iron was a kind of magic. I think this is why Bethesda chose to upgrade smithing from a "maintenance only" to "huge game-killing bonus" skill in this of all games.

Even so, I think they overdid it, which is why I've spent the past three weeks trying to craft a mod to gimp it in a way that makes sense to me, without creating new absurdities.

Finally, will everyone please just shut up about the iron daggers? If you're trying to level smithing by crafting iron daggers, you deserve every last ounce of boredom that comes your way. Heck, it's not even the most efficient way to use up iron ingots and leather strips, even if that is all you've got. (Iron helmets are worth more than twice as much, per unit of input, and will level your skill twice as fast.)

[VoxRationis]

I'm with Aeson here. Stuff like the lockpicking minigame in Skyrim (and the minigame you're talking about is a very similar idea, Knaight) are more reliant on the player's twitch skills than they are on the in-game character's skill, and that's not great in a CRPG. As he points out, there is really never any point in putting any points into lockpicking perks in Skyrim--lockpicks are not in short supply and the minigame is not difficult, so you can generally open any lock you like given a bit of time and effort. It's also notable that there isn't any equivalent minigame for any other skill in the game, so it feels like a bit of a pointless distraction--which is quite important when we're discussing how to make the game feel less soulless and more realistic.

I have to say, I am not quite on board with the general consensus on lockpicking in Skyrim. Perhaps it's because I've played the game on consoles—I'm not sure how the inputs work on keyboards—but I've found that the task, while dependent on player skill, is still very noticeably affected by character skill. Not, admittedly, to the point where I ever take lockpicking perks, but trying a master lock when my character has 50 lockpicking is much easier and less resource-intensive than trying it at 15 lockpicking, which seems in keeping with what the game designers likely intended.

[Morty]

I felt like it's more of a problem that every character will have lockpicking no matter who they are otherwise. Everyone wants treasure, so they'll try to open those chests and doors, and you don't have to give up any other skill for that.

[Eldan]

Hmm, that's fair. And it probably wouldn't be as fun to do that in Skyrim or some other ES game than it is in Monster Hunter, where the hunting and crafting to hunt more to craft more are the core parts of the game.



Technically, crafting has always been a core part of the Elder Scrolls series... Crafting potions, that is. Equipment was new in Skyrim.
Ironically enough, crafting could easily break the game in Morrowind, so I guess crafting has always been blowing looting stuff out of the water with its sheer versatility and potential for power.

Not entirely new. There was a craftsman in the Tribunal expansion for Morrowind who would make high grade armour for you if you brought him ebony, mithril or glass.

[Knaight]

I'm with Aeson here. Stuff like the lockpicking minigame in Skyrim (and the minigame you're talking about is a very similar idea, Knaight) are more reliant on the player's twitch skills than they are on the in-game character's skill, and that's not great in a CRPG.

Clearly I described it poorly, because I've played both and the two handle completely differently. One of them is a one time button press about precise timing when given direct information, which takes literally about a second - if anything it's analogous to timed wheel stopping mechanics and similar, but without the spin down. The other is Skyrim's lock picking system, which can easily take 30+ seconds and is based on moving two objects precisely. They're not similar.

As for the player skill versus character skill, the entire point of this sort of mechanic is to make both count for something. In this case it takes player skill to complete the task, but the actual difficulty of the task is governed by character skill.

[Cespenar]

Not entirely new. There was a craftsman in the Tribunal expansion for Morrowind who would make high grade armour for you if you brought him ebony, mithril or glass.

Which, again, makes a lot more sense than to make the player spend hours grinding Iron Daggers in order to get their skill up like a braindead MMORPG.

[factotum]

But that's my point--why should player skill be involved at all? The skill in a CRPG really should lie in building your character and selecting the appropriate skills for what you have in mind, not being good at twitch. If I wanted twitch gameplay I'd be playing Call of Duty.

[Eldan]

Smithing is thematically appropriate to Skyrim. Smiths were very important in Nordic culture, seen as vaguely supernatural in their own right. A proper Norse hero was one who could make his own sword. In mythology, the master smiths were pretty much indistinguishable from magic-users, because the ability to work iron was a kind of magic. I think this is why Bethesda chose to upgrade smithing from a "maintenance only" to "huge game-killing bonus" skill in this of all games.

Even so, I think they overdid it, which is why I've spent the past three weeks trying to craft a mod to gimp it in a way that makes sense to me, without creating new absurdities.

Finally, will everyone please just shut up about the iron daggers? If you're trying to level smithing by crafting iron daggers, you deserve every last ounce of boredom that comes your way. Heck, it's not even the most efficient way to use up iron ingots and leather strips, even if that is all you've got. (Iron helmets are worth more than twice as much, per unit of input, and will level your skill twice as fast.)

On the one hand yeees, but on the other, Smithing in Skyrim is really, really dull. Finding ore, smelting it, cutting leather, it's a very boring skill to increase. You increase your fighting skills by fighting. It's exciting. You increase your magic by learning new spells. You increase your smithing by standing at a forge for ages.

I'd be a lot less down on it if it was more along the lines of learning the skill of smithing from Stuhn or Kyne, finding the six legendary ores that are scattered across the world, unearthing the Hammer of Irkngthand, finding the mystical sky forge, liberating it of the undead dragon priest smith that haunts it and then forging one unique artefact, instead of grinding out dozens or largely useless items. I mean, I understand why, learning the skill first makes sense, but it's dull.

[Knaight]

But that's my point--why should player skill be involved at all? The skill in a CRPG really should lie in building your character and selecting the appropriate skills for what you have in mind, not being good at twitch. If I wanted twitch gameplay I'd be playing Call of Duty.

This particular CRPG has a real time combat system with actual positioning - incorporating skills beyond character building is already very much a part of it, including what can loosely be described as twitch skills.

[Cespenar]

But that's my point--why should player skill be involved at all? The skill in a CRPG really should lie in building your character and selecting the appropriate skills for what you have in mind, not being good at twitch. If I wanted twitch gameplay I'd be playing Call of Duty.

It's already an action RPG. Even with its "meh" combat system, if you mess up your footwork, your enemy gets an extra attack instead of you. If you score a headshot with an arrow, you're miles ahead from an otherwise higher level, archery-focused character who missed their shot. Etc.

Player skill has always been relevant in RPGs. It's just that its weight and the "type" of required skill are different from game to game.

[Morty]

TES games have had this conflict since Morrowind, where some skills require more player input than others. Or rather, in Morrowind melee combat didn't require much input - but that already clashed with a 3D environment. Not like in Daggerfall, where you just pointed and clicked regardless of what you did.

[Aeson]

This particular CRPG has a real time combat system with actual positioning - incorporating skills beyond character building is already very much a part of it, including what can loosely be described as twitch skills.

And yet its combat skills essentially boil down to "how hard can you hit something with a sword" or "are you able to perform a certain maneuver under ideal conditions," not to positional advantage or anything like tactics and strategy. The part of combat which is dependent upon player-skill is largely unrelated to the part of combat governed by character-skill. There are no in-game skills covering your character's understanding of positional advantage, area denial, target selection, or anything like that. The closest the extant skills come to that are power attacks, blocking, archery, and shield bash, but the related skills can mostly very easily be considered to be "do you know how to do these things" and "can you do them under ideal conditions," not "do you know when to do these things" and "can you do them in practical conditions."

Furthermore, high combat-related character skills tell you that you have some kind of juggernaut murder-machine. Good target selection, good tactics, and good 'twitch' skills make combat easier ... but even without them, you're still left with a character who is a juggernaut murder-machine, which is exactly what the character sheet tells you you have. This isn't the case with crafting skills - putting Alchemy 100 or Smithing 100 or Enchant 100 on the character sheet says that the character is some kind of master alchemist or master smith or master enchanter, but a player who lacks the requisite skill to succeed in a crafting minigame does not have a master alchemist or master smith or master enchanter, because theoretical knowledge without practical ability does not a master alchemist or master smith or master enchanter make.

I have to say, I am not quite on board with the general consensus on lockpicking in Skyrim. Perhaps it's because I've played the game on consoles—I'm not sure how the inputs work on keyboards—but I've found that the task, while dependent on player skill, is still very noticeably affected by character skill. Not, admittedly, to the point where I ever take lockpicking perks, but trying a master lock when my character has 50 lockpicking is much easier and less resource-intensive than trying it at 15 lockpicking, which seems in keeping with what the game designers likely intended.

If the reward for developing the character-skill governing a minigame is to make the minigame waste less of the player's time, why include the minigame at all?

I felt like it's more of a problem that every character will have lockpicking no matter who they are otherwise. Everyone wants treasure, so they'll try to open those chests and doors, and you don't have to give up any other skill for that.

I agree, and it'd be nice if they brought back the Unlock magical effect and introduced a 'bash open the chest/door/other locked object' mechanic to give players a couple alternatives to developing the lockpicking skill.

[Rynjin]

I feel like the ship for a bashing mechanic has sailed. Sensibly it would be some kind of strength check, but they ditched stat growth.

[Aeson]

I feel like the ship for a bashing mechanic has sailed. Sensibly it would be some kind of strength check, but they ditched stat growth.

A check against the weapon skill for your currently-equipped weapon could work instead. Or they could just give locked objects some amount of HP, and bashing it open means hitting it with an attack until the HP bar is depleted, though such a system could lead to oddities like bashing open a door by shooting arrows at it.

[VoxRationis]

Furthermore, high combat-related character skills tell you that you have some kind of juggernaut murder-machine. Good target selection, good tactics, and good 'twitch' skills make combat easier ... but even without them, you're still left with a character who is a juggernaut murder-machine, which is exactly what the character sheet tells you you have. This isn't the case with crafting skills - putting Alchemy 100 or Smithing 100 or Enchant 100 on the character sheet says that the character is some kind of master alchemist or master smith or master enchanter, but a player who lacks the requisite skill to succeed in a crafting minigame does not have a master alchemist or master smith or master enchanter, because theoretical knowledge without practical ability does not a master alchemist or master smith or master enchanter make.

But if you don't have those player skills in combat, that warhammer-swinging combat juggernaut is going to feel rather unlike an unstoppable killing machine, because you'll get stymied half the time by your own combat animations. Conversely, if you have those player skills in combat, you can run into the Temple of Miraak at level 7 and kill all the deathlords. I do like RPGs where player control skill (as opposed to tactics) is not a significant factor, but TES is already a series where that's not really possible without completely abandoning its basic design.

If the reward for developing the character-skill governing a minigame is to make the minigame waste less of the player's time, why include the minigame at all?

Combat takes less time if you're better at the player skills germane to it and if your character has better stats. Magical duels are a lot quicker if you have powerful spells, rather than just Flames. High-level stealth characters can get through an area a lot more simply and directly than low-level stealth characters. It's the general case that the better your player-skill and character-skill are in relation to the difficulty of a task, the quicker and easier the task is, with the exception of crafting, which continues to be an inventory menu. I don't think we can take that as an admission that this means that the task is "wasting" anybody's time.

[Talion]

Not entirely new. There was a craftsman in the Tribunal expansion for Morrowind who would make high grade armour for you if you brought him ebony, mithril or glass.

Or Adamantium (which honestly enough would be daft to try anyway, since there aren't enough ores in the vanilla game to make a complete set of the stuff, even with the loose ends of pieces placed throughout the game, so you end up just murder hoboing the guy who already has a full set anyway). Or, in the Bloodmon expansion, you could also get bear fur, wolf fur, or Stalhrim armor (and in the latter's case weapons, though in a rather nonsensical fashion a dagger takes as much Stalhrim as a cuirass or greaves). Overall not well implemented, but their heart was in the right place I think.

[Aeson]

Combat takes less time if you're better at the player skills germane to it and if your character has better stats. Magical duels are a lot quicker if you have powerful spells, rather than just Flames. High-level stealth characters can get through an area a lot more simply and directly than low-level stealth characters. It's the general case that the better your player-skill and character-skill are in relation to the difficulty of a task, the quicker and easier the task is, with the exception of crafting, which continues to be an inventory menu. I don't think we can take that as an admission that this means that the task is "wasting" anybody's time.

Being able to kill things quickly matters within the game; being able to open a lock quickly does not. The game world simulation freezes while you're trying to pick a lock, but not while you're fighting. No town guard will ever catch me breaking into a building because I took too long to open a locked door nor will any draugr ever catch me unawares while I fumble with the lock on a chest in a tomb, but a bandit could come up behind me while I'm fighting something else, my sneak attack could fail to kill the target if my weapon skill is low enough, and I could avoid getting a bounty if I can kill all the witnesses to a crime quickly enough. Even if I'm never in a straight DPS race, my attainable DPS and my effective damage reduction matter in many ways within the game. Your character's stealth skill likewise has in-game effects - there are places where sneaking is not practical at low-level Sneak skill. There are things which are impractical to steal (without silly exploits like putting buckets over NPCs' heads) unless your character has a high Sneak skill. Sneak attacks become much more effective for removing high-threat targets at low personal risk when your character's Sneak skill is high. Pickpocketing is often impractical while Sneak skill is low. These are meaningful in-game effects of having a high Sneak skill. Lockpicking, though? There's basically no in-game impact to being good at opening locks, and essentially the only impact of being bad at opening locks is that you might need to go find more lockpicks, at least until you obtain an unbreakable lockpick (Skeleton Key, Unbreakable skill perk). The only value offered by the skill is that at higher skill levels less of the player's time will be wasted on a stupid minigame that has no real impact on anything else within the game.

For all that Morrowind's lockpicking system is not something that I'd cite as a particularly fun or engaging system in and of itself, I'd still say that it's a better system than Oblivion's and Skyrim's because of how it interacts with the game world. It's mechanically consistent with the rest of the game, and how quickly and whether or not your character can reliably open a locked object actually matters within the game, not just in terms of how much real-world time that you the player have to waste trying to open the locked object. Having a high Security skill is useful, because it means you're more likely to be able to open the locked door before the guard's patrol route brings him past it again, or because it means you're more likely to be able to open the locked chest before the Flame Atronach is finished dispatching the Ancestral Ghost you summoned as a distraction, or because it means you're almost certainly going to be able to disarm the trap on this door you're coming up to on your first attempt so you can open it without getting a face-full of poison, duck through, and shut it in the face of your pursuers when the need arises. It's not a good system because clicking on the locked object repeatedly until the RNG decides that you've unlocked it is inherently fun, engaging, or interesting (it's not, but then the lockpicking minigames in Oblivion and Skyrim aren't fun, engaging, or interesting, either), it's a good system because it can interact with the game-world in interesting ways.

Good game design is about making a game whose systems interact with one another in enjoyable, entertaining, engaging, or interesting ways. Minigames are at best tangential to that - your game's computer-hacking minigame could be the finest implementation of Pipes I've ever seen, but if it doesn't interact with any of the other game mechanics then I have to wonder why it's there, because it doesn't actually do anything in the game.

[Cespenar]

Is there a mod which lets time pass while you pick locks? That would be pretty good IMO, where you hear footsteps, panic, and break your pick or whatnot.