Since the engine has apparently changed to something other than Gamebryo - although that is somewhat speculation since the Twitter post doesn't specifically mention what engine -, there is room for serious improvement to the modification environment we can use with the game.

Animation

Specifically weapon-use animations. Now, animations is not my strong suit as I only recently have been trying to import idle animations into Fallout: New Vegas, however I did find that you cannot import new weapon-use animations (firing, reloading, etc.). For the next installment, I believe that this should be added for projectile weapons (bows, crossbows) at least. Aside from this, I cannot really say much else.

Collision

This is definitely something that has irked me in the most recent of days. I can remember making meshes for Morrowind and things such as collision were very simple; you exported it and it worked. Of course, it may have been the exporter for 3D Studio Max 4 and 5 at the time automated the task, I truly cannot say. However, in making a new building mesh for Fallout: New Vegas recently, I found that attempting to export the mesh from 3D Studio Max 9 to the game and have collision working was an utter attempt solely at frustration. So far, I have not been able to get the mesh to export and have collision consistently - once it worked, then I added vertex coloring to finalize its look, then collision didn't work and now it does again. Perhaps an answer to this would be to have collision on automatically on an object as it would appear that collision is needed far more than not. Particles, cloth, plants, leaves on trees, and any other billboard objects seem to be the only objects which do not use collision that I can think of presently.

Scripting

If players are again going to have the ability to modify the game to such a depth as has been seen previously - which is somewhat up in the air given a new engine -, the scripting engine is in desperate need of an overhaul. While in the past, the various script extenders have given modders some of the tools to make scripting easier and more in-depth, it would be best to have some of these abilities be native. To name just a few things I would rather like to see in new scripting engine follows thusly:

• Arrays
  
• Loop controls - for, foreach, while, and do-while loops
  
• Definable Functions outside of the scripting blocks.
  
• Object access methods
  
• Maths functions

Now, someone once said to me that the current scripting environment is better suited to non-programmers for ease-of-use amongst the widest swath of people. As it is, however, actual programmers, I imagine, would be very frustrated by the lack of basic programing techniques. Perhaps then two systems could be developed alongside each other; one would be the current environment for non-programmers and the other could be the "expert" environment for programmers where it would look like an actual language (the aforementioned elements plus braces, scope declaration, etc.).

In-Game User Interface

This is perhaps the biggest upgrade that they could make to the mod system: being able to create and call new UI elements. For all of the past games, whenever a modder wished to have a menu, they would make a series of MessageBox commands and get the button state, etc. This is horribly-cumbersome and a very tired method. The UI was changed, it seems, to an XML format which allowed for the addition of new elements (DarnUI for example). I think that this can be extended to create new menus which could be attached to new commands (like the ShowBarterMenu, etc.).



These are just some of the things that I think could be improved upon. I am not ungrateful for the systems we have at present, but like all things, it must advance with the times. But please, tell me what you think.

What i would personally like to see is a more stable and versatile construction set, with less crashing and more common features such as multiple copy-paste, which really doesn't add anything complex to the source code, but saves hours on large mods, which become days, weeks and even months in a modder's "career" with a specific game. I became tired of copying hundreds of hair types from one race to another one by one and without a preview of what i am actually moving, or spending minutes looking for a single script in the minimal script window every time i have to add a single variable or correct a mistake.

Speaking of what OP mentioned I agree with implementing native extended scripting, as the use of script extenders has been imperative in the TES-FO3 modding community, which just complicates the already troubling compatibility issues and mod-upgrading procedures.

Since they are using a new engine i think the obvious step would be to integrate one of the most famous game scripting languages, such as LUA.
In any case Bethesda should in no way underestimate a young modder's ability to learn programming languages and scripts when necessary...

I had forgotten about placing eye and hair entries into races' lists. Bloody hell that was annoying.

LUA could be a good answer, yes. The syntax is already very similar to the scripting engine.

I'd like to see some kind of tiered scripting system-for instance allowing beginners to choose from a set of "script templates" for some basic scripting elements where they can just "plug in" certain values. For instance, I really liked the scripting system in RPG Maker 2-it still takes some time to figure out but it gives you a fair number of pretty basic things and you don't need to learn a "language" to get anything to work. A template system would be similar enough, it would automatically provide you with a framework for the script along with clear indications of what the different values control-eventually a beginner such as myself could ease their way in to writing their own unique scripts.

The second tier would then be the basic scripting language with most of the features you'd expect from previous gamesas games and perhaps a few more.

The third tier would get into more advanced programing stuff, perhaps allowing a number of things that gamesas might not have even thought of doing when originally programing the game.

If they play their cards right they could make the need for an external program (or "SSE"-Skyrim Script Extender) obsolete.