With spells being so overpowered and your mana automatically recharging, you have to give some kind of advantage to alchemy, otherwise potions become totally outclassed and pointless.

Maybe require a certain level of alchemy skill first, but once you reach it, you should be able to create potions that heal instantly.

Can there be an appeal to tone the healing system down instead of overbeefing to compensate for a large problem?

I personally hope they don't do like FNV and make basically only one comsumable that has an instant health recovery stat. Stimpaks. Everything else was a gradual heal over a period of time, mostly insignificant. That was kind of irritating to me. But i guess it's very unrealistic to even want something other than a "health pack" that's going to increase the current amount of health one has.

The problem being that most players absolutely hate managing their health.

It's why recharging health has become so prevalent. People don't like having to apply much though to something they must do as frequently as healing.

Breaking up the restoration skill and compartmentalizing it into different types of injuries/diseases/curses might make sense, but for as basic a need as healing, I'm just not sure that adding more complexity will equate to more fun for the average player.

(that said, I myself hope for more dangerous and more common curses and diseases than in Oblivion, but I would rather the dangers be beefed up than the healing be toned down)

As far as I see it:
Magic could instant heal. But healing over time?... so I cast a "x" sec heal spell and lose all the magic for it, where IS this energy being stored as it drains into HP? Even in the realm of magic the law of conservation of mass and energy should be observed. Magic healing should either be instantaneous or constant effect, with a constant drain on magicka while active. Only the highest level spells should heal a significant amount of HP instantly. Options should be available for things like an auto-off when HP is full, some way of turning it off (if you decide you don't want to use all your magicka on HP.) I'm very fond of the idea of expanding magic making options (possibly allowing for spell making from the Player menu, but at least something new (cheers to whoever at Bethesda came up with the "cast with weapon drawn" it was well over due)).
Potions should be gradual and powerful, last more than 30 secs, but not heal fast enough to make you invincible. More like a boost to metabolism. After all, potions are used by the digestive system which isn't an instant thing. Potions can be considered magic and/or medicine. (You could say that potions are magic and so they should be instantaneous, and I could respect that, but allowing potions to behave differently opens up options to player about how they want to heal themselves and that shouldnt be ignored even if you want to ignore realism -- which I don't)
Healing from waiting / resting, is not realistic per se (unless you plan on being off that broken leg for 6+ months) but is good for gameplay and provides a valid alternative for no-magic Players. In any case, there should be no "wait 1 hr for full stats" since this is IMO game-breaking from both a realistic and a gameplay perspective.
Healing from shrines / healers is up to the devs as far as I am concerned, its really more of a question of lore than reality / gameplay.

I like games where character deaths are real (die and restart). I like when I do something rash and pay for it / stress out over it for the next 3 hours (Daggerfall nostalgia. fighting that zombie, getting diseased and then stressing as you realize you do not have any way to cure diseases and may not have enough time to find a way out of the dungeon and back to town.) I also like playing rashly where I know I can just go back to the last save. Saving, after all, is optional and hardcoe player shouldn't demand that the game can't appeal to more casual audiences (but casual audiences should expect the game to hold their hand either.) I'm sure the devs can and will find a balance that can at least satisfy the majority of us.

Essentially and summarily, gameplay > realism, except where realism makes gameplay better. All things equal, realism is better than mysticism.

Well there is ofcourse that problem. Hmm, maybe restorationmagic could be changed a bit (just an idea):

your restoration skill determines how much HP restoration spells can heal of your maximum HP, the bigger the skill, the more % of the HP you can recover through spells. The rest would have to be gained through sleeping/potions/altars etc.

Whattcha think?

We must remember its a game, so there shouldn't be any sacrifice of convenience in the name if simple immersion.

Personally I found the systems in place in Oblivion to be sufficient enough, the waiting one hour to heal thing was a bit of a hack (that I gleefully exploited) but that's about all I think was wrong with the system.

Punishing the player with having to wait long periods of time for spells to heal or for potions to heal doesn't seem to make any sense, sure it might seem realistic but its just adding a very boring piece of immersion onto the game. I don't want to have to WAIT periods of time to heal with potions or magic. I want to heal quick, then move onto more fun and interesting aspects of the game.

I agree totally with you on this.

Fallout 3's health recovery system was perfect you had to either sleep or eat stuff in order to recover your health. I would love for that system to be implemented in Skyrim although I still want my Magicka to regenerate so if I wait an hour my Magicka will be full but my health will remain the same.

You are so right. So we must do away with having hit points at all, since it sacrifices convenience. We'll just be invulnerable.

That annoying magicka system also has to go- not being able to cast any spell, any time, as many times as you want interferes with convenience.

Fast travel is even inconvenient- the game should take place entirely within arm's reach of the player character, so as not to sacrifice convenience by requiring them to move.

Right? Remember, you're the one who declared there should be no sacrifice of convenience so be very careful in how you answer...

I will agree that restoration needs to be reformed. If restoration was to be removed from Oblivion's current magic system, then I would propose moving the absorbs to destruction, the cures to alchemy, the fortifies to either alteration or more likely mysticism, restores to mysticism, and the resists to mysticism as well. Mysticism seems to be lacking to me, and if any school fits close enough to enough to restoration, it's mysticism (isn't damaging, summoning, altering, or only an illusion).

As for your disease example, I can agree with you that restoration makes diseases completely harmless. In my mind, diseases should have a scale somewhat akin to radiation in fallout. The three main points in that example are that I think diseases should be given on a scale. 0 means you don't have the disease, 100 means you die. You lose attributes as you get infected worse, and you get infected worse by neglecting to cure your disease or by maintaining contact with the infected. Cure potions would take off say 25 pts, altars 100, and spells would be much less, maybe around 5 pts as an expert, 10 at master.

Finally, don't assume that I'm basing everything off Oblivion. I've played all the games since Daggerfall and I can assure you that in Daggerfall:
1. Restoration existed with cure disease and restore health
2. Thaumaturgy spells are still in the game, just under new schools. They also make more sense in these new schools which, along with the creation of Conjuration, was probably why this entire spell book was removed: It made more sense.

High Five

...so I can heal up to 100% with restoration spells and then wait another hour for the exactly same effect as in Oblivion one hour of waiting does.

Just take away all regeneration when waiting, to prevent it being an Overpowered method of always being at 100% combat efficiency.

I think OB had it ok, trough spells and potions as welll as rest. Obviously the more hours you rest, hte more you heal (it should take a day maybe to be fully healed) and the HP recovered using spells and potions obviously depends on it's power.

This is the only thing I think needs to be changed. Or just do not allow waiting in dungeons or caves etc.

Obama said there will be change, and I don't see giraffes falling from the sky so he should be fired. There is no need to be sarcastic while you exaggerate words completely out of context. This is a thread about making health harder/slower to restore. He is saying THIS system should stay the same. Follow your own advice. (See underlined in quoted text) Also note that I am being only sarcastic, not an exaggerator.

Potions heal over time and can only heal damage. Magic can heal instantly and high level magic can heal broken bones (yes, I want broken bones - at least in a hardcoe mode). Doctors can heal broken bones and/or put you back at full health for a price. Waiting regenerates mana at the same rate as sleeping but regenerates health much more slowly than sleeping. Poisons are diseases can only be cured with potions or max level magic. Bleeds (I want those too) can be bandaged or burned closed with magic.

Fallout 3 had limb damage and crippling. It would be a nice addition to this game aswell