Since ES6 probably won’t be out until I’m a retiree, I’ve always wondered why they never did more DLC for Skyrim since they knew they would take forever to make ES6. What are some DLC you think they should’ve done. I would’ve loved one that settles the issue of the civil war and Thalmor. There is a civil war mod that restores the original civil war where you have a real chance of losing (I did) and there is a real time map showing your strong holds and you get messages where you have to go help them.
Also instead of a house building dlc why not a dlc where you can start a settlement and run it. I remember a Hammerfell dlc rumor but wasn’t sure if that was ever even planned.
I’m thankful for the modding community with Skyrim though. Also I’d love to know what the bee in the jar plan was
For your first question, the answer is simple: Bethesda had no idea it would take forever for the next Elder Scrolls to come out. While they were working on post-release content for Skyrim, they figured they would release a new iteration within the next 5-7 years or so, alternating between it and Fallout like they had been doing. Bethesda had been amazingly efficient before. Morrowind was out in 2002, Oblivion in 2006, Fallout 3 in 2008(!), and Skyrim in 2011. So with all this in mind, they pretty much saw no reason to produce any more DLCs and that the teams behind them should focus on the next game (Fallout 4). Even back in the 2010s, singleplayer games had a limited shelf life and it was better to get cracking on a new project than to keep adding to an old one that gamers would by and large move on from within a year.
But obviously, things changed, both at Bethesda and in the industry as a whole. So many things that I don't think any one of them could be blamed individually. Bethesda started to get more greedy and sought more ways of squeezing blood out of the rock, starting with monetizing mods. They also learned that they could port Skyrim around to the newer, better consoles, and people would buy it. Heck, they could even re-release it on PC at almost full price and people would still buy it in droves just to get higher resolution textures. They could release a half-assed asset flip live-service game like Fallout 76 and still make a profit, even through a storm of controversy. And when a TES MMORPG was released, Bethesda likely realized they didn't need to make any more TES content for a good while because that one was filling the niche, would for years to come, and would generate a steady income. Which gave the company plenty of incentive to try something new, like a space game.
And this is all without taking into account what the suits were probably doing behind the scenes, especially once the studio changed hands from Zenimax to Microsoft.
For your second question, I imagine the devs were kicking around an idea to implement a settlement-building system into Skyrim, but ultimately deemed it too complex for a simple DLC and decided to instead fold it into Fallout 4.
That breakdown makes a lot of sense. Thanks. I do love the sheer amount of available mods