yes my problem with the zombies "besides being freaked out by them.." is how they are all exactly the same...all human...i would like to see i infection feature where monsters killed by a zombie will themselves become an undead.
and yes more variety of monsters...and make them have a bit of their own physical and characteristic traits...give them a little personality...

as far as zombie monsters go...I think dire wolves and dire bears and plague rats would be good...I want giant snakes, like the titan boa, nile/saltwater crocodiles. Some kind of rhinoceros or elephatine creature, big, with tusks or horns. Wild bovines, like an auroch or bison.

Definately bring back the vampire clans.

Cliff Racers; since they got driven from Vvardenfell, they must have ended up somewhere.

How about trolls that can actually regenerate? You hack off a limb, and you think that the battle's won. But then another arm materializes from the wound! It reaches down, picks up its old arm, and proceeds to pummel you with it.

I remember when I first saw a troll in Oblivion, somewhere around level 7. It came at me, and killed me in a few hits. A couple levels later, they were complete pushovers. I want to be consistently challenged! Trolls are supposed to be these big, bad, hard to kill monsters in the tabletop games the Elder Scrolls version of the troll came from, it's about time we bring that challenge to Tamriel!

Agreed.

Also, on the topic of Cliffracers, I have a suggestion: if they are implemented in the next game (I kinda hope they are, we need aerial monsters), make them more timid. They might be roosting on a cliff somewhere, carefully watching the player. But, they don't actually attack until they're spooked somehow (maybe the player decides to walk through their nest and collect some eggs for an alchemy project?), at which point the entire flock attacks all at once. They might be pretty weak individually, but get enough Cliffracers together, and we've got ourselves a problem!

hmm maybe also a bosmer on top of one to act as a boss, or else a high level mage
something like that

Valkyrie's (flying warriors with swords , spears, bows) That would be epic they would be the ultimate test

You know, I did want to lambaste you guys for being uncreative with your monster ideas, but everyone keeps talking about Skyrim being the next location (personally, I'd choose any province BUT Skyrim), and I started thinking about it. Snowy, ice covered terrain doesn't lend itself to a lot of really unique monster ideas.

It's a shame really because if there's one thing I always thought was lacking in TES was creative monster design. I've always found the enemies very dull and extremely cliche in these games, despite my love for the game itself. There's some exceptions (dreugh), but not many. It's all typical fantasy stuff (trolls, ogres, undead - yawn).

That said, heres some crappy monster ideas to add to the rather bland list:

Giant evil, disgusting penguins.

Evil fat snowmen that rise from the tundra.

Giant bloodthirsty brids of prey that SWOOP to attack. Most flying animals don't hang in the air and fight like a floating ghost or something.

Some invisible creature that you see by following tracks in the snow that fight with gusty blizzard type attacks.

Cave dwelling Grinch type trogs.

Oh, and a big, fat, murderous Santa Claws.

Honestly, I could come up with a 100 ideas from something like Summerset or the Black Marsh, but the Skyrim monsters will just be more of the same.

Now, the Black Marsh! That would be cool! But I'll wait till they can make a really good swamp terrain on a next gen console.

http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/aldudagga.shtml#3

'Nuff said.

Enemies that break the concept of "if it has stats we can kill it". Sometimes, just enemies that you survive, not necessarily defeat. Enemies that require a variety tactics, such that characters with different skillsets (but roughly the same level) may find them either difficult or easy to deal with.

Swarms: Rats, stinging insects. Weapons do essentially nothing (maybe kill one rat per strike). Area effect damage spells are the way to go.

Incorporeal spirits: You either have to banish them or avoid them (but if you cause them to expend all of their energy, they're harmless for a while). Poltergeists would be invisible, and would tend to throw things at you, trigger traps, or just make spooky sounds. Fire spirits could ignite flammables around you (and gain strength from the fire), could cause fire from your torch to leap off and attack you, and so on.

Wolf-packs: Several animals, run close to you (but keep a safe distance), keep circling you, and attempt to attack you from behind or on your sides and drag you down where others can pile on. Werewolves would probably use similar tactics.

Flying enemies: True flight, not the ridiculous hovering of cliff racers. If they were like cliff racers, they would circle much higher, looking for prey. They would swoop or drop to attack. If you're lucky, you might hear a shriek or see a shadow racing at you before they hit. Some of the stronger or smarter ones might try to drop objects on you, or pick you up and let gravity do the dirty work.

Balanced Parties: That is, groups that have tanks, flankers, ranged strikers, healers, and so on and work together to amplify their threat level. Such groups would also be subject to morale penalties when allies are killed. Generally NPCs, but could also apply to daedra, certain types of undead, or goblins.

Ambush: Spiders climbing the walls and dropping from the ceiling on threads; underwater creatures attacking you when you get close to the water's edge; camouflaged enemies that are aware of where the player is looking and completely freeze when the player looks in their direction (like the creepy "statue" splicers in Bioshock)

Thief-geared enemies: Enemies that are particularly unobservant, but which will pummel the holy hell out of a character in combat (ie, are easy for a thief character to avoid, but lethal for a fighter or combat mage). Alternatively, enemies that are almost impossible to fool with illusions, but not too incredibly tough.

Also, resisting illusion magic should be a function of willpower, not NPC/creature level. Certain enemies should be highly susceptible, other enemies should be very resistant to mental tampering.

undead variety, as I said earlier
also, I'm tired of the old slow zombie bit, make them normal speed and more difficult


common zombies (at least give them clothes this time) have no weapons or magic, the most common type of zombie

warrior zombies have heavy and weapons that they can use effectively

mage zombies looks almost similar to common zombies, but can use magica

archer zombies have light armor, bows, and arrows that allows them to attack from a longer distance

warlord zombies wear heavier armor than warriors, and have superior stats (if he falls, the rest of the zombies will be less organized)

berserker zombies wear light armor and use war axes, this allows them to get up close and personal quickly



something to that extent

Aren't zombies supposed to be mindless beings which do the will of the necromancer that raised them, or are that way due to a curse or the like? this would seem to preclude them from using magic (the only undead that should use magic are liches) and probably most weapons as well, they may be able to use some blunt weapons like a club but a master zombie swordsman doesn't seem likely, that sort of thing falls to skeletons i think wearing armor is perfectly fine.

What i think would be a great way of doing zombies would be to make them unkillable with normal weapons. you can knock them out for a minute or two but then they'll wake back up, if they wake up and you're not nearby they shouldn't have memory that you are two rooms over, but when returning through the dungeon you'll have to deal with them again.

Possible ways of permenantly dealing with zombies would be dismemberment. obviously not just cutting the head off since there are headless zombies, but cutting off enough limbs that they are unable to reach you, destruction magic where you get them to explode into giblets, or some sort of purify magic that would release the animating spirit.

Also good to mention is a quote, "The only thing worse than having hordes of the undead coming for your brains is having hordes of the undead coming for your brains, while on fire," if you set a zombie ablaze it should set you ablaze when it touches you or at least have an added fire enchantment type thing added to it's attacks, maybe they could eventually be reduced to ash but it should take a LOT of fire to do so.

Dismemberment? Great, so long as zombie legs and torsos continue to twitch or flop around, zombie heads try to bite you when you get near (if you just decapitate them, they should pick up the head and carry it around, so it can bite you), and zombie hands and arms that try to pull themselves to you and grab your legs.

I want to see more types of wild life. Lions n Tigres n Girafs and .. handcuffs.

Randomly spawned werewlves and vampires with no proper names or affiliation. It would make travel in those areas, especially at night, pretty scary.
Some kind of giant swamp thing, like the one that ate r2d2 in empire strikes back.

I wouldn't really say randomly spawned because whenever things randomly spawn, you could look somewhere and turn your back and then get hit from behind when nothing was there... I'd like things to be the way they were in morrowind. Not randomly spawned, but they kept coming back.

I meant a low probability of them appearing, like the werewolves in goty. Mostly not being there... ummm, did that sound like I said the same thing? I'm trying not to.

Oh, I see what you're saying lol. You know, I've never ran into a werewolf in GOTY except for the end.

Well, the creatures obviously would have to fit the setting. Since the "rumor" is that Skyrim is the setting (please make it take place somewhere else; preferably Elsweyr and Valenwood combined) I'm going to suggest creatures suited to the cold and mountains (great, another generic setting). I'd like to see some new "ice creatures" I'd call them; maybe something like a Kagouti-like creature, but with spikes on its back, or frost-breathing abilities. Something like a giant, overly-aggressive ice-lizard that found some way to keep warm (maybe killing warm-blooded creatures and taking refuge inside their guts (gruesome, I know, but that would be so cool) or burrowing underground) would be cool to see. I think the TES V team could have a great time exploring possibilities for insanely interesting/inventive/weird ice-based creatures; I think cool creatures could be a distraction from a possibly overly-generic setting. I would definitely like to see some newly devised undead (ice-themed of course); suggestions of mine include skeletal frost mages, frostbitten zombies (zombies with no legs would be so cool). OR, BETHESDA COULD MAKE TES V IN ELSWEYR!

(Edit: Accidentally posted before I was finished)

Me either!
I only bought the PC version for mod use, and all my actual in-game goty experiences are on xbox.
Which means I've never seen a random werewolf, though I've hunted for them many times.
I'd like to see this kind of thing, as long as it's time/area specific...

Personally I think it'd be cooler if the game was based on some sort of war between either two provinces, two kingdoms, or two continents, with most enemies coming in the form of enemy soldiers. That way, monsters could be much rarer and not just some "random encounter" found in the wilderness which can get pretty monotonous. I think it'd be cool if only specific magical creatures existed in the game (like the various npc's) and that most of those creatures are intelligent (hags, vampires, liches, trolls, ogres, goblins, draugr, spriggans, golems/atronachs, and various daedra to name some of the smaller monsters available). It might also be fun however if there are very powerful monsters which need to be avoided rather than confronted (like sandworms in Dune), like a dragon-type creature.

Instead of just being stupid things killed every 5 minutes, magical creatures might develop their own personalities and characters. Spriggans could be very powerful nature spirits capable of doing many unique things, almost to the extent of what a lich could do. Moreover, I think most powerful enemies should be very powerful (liches, vampire elders, maybe spriggans, Spider daedra, etc), but also intelligent and not prone to killing directly. It would also be interesting if all monsters had unique names (you might even encounter a daedra you killed earlier in a summoning spell).

I really want to see the draugrs back, or, at the very least, some type of ghoul (In the D&D, not Fallout sense) monster. But I'd like to see them as intelligent undead, sneaky and quick, rather than just glorified zombies. If the development team was feeling really adventurous, player could even turn INTO ghouls, if they indulged in cannibalism (eating mort flesh ain't such a good idea anymore, is it?)
Reference:
http://vnmedia.ign.com/nwvault.ign.com/NWN2/creatures/MM35_PG119.jpg

Rancor? Haven't seen those movies for a long time
But maybe some little creatures that are harmless but can be fun to hunt (rabbit, frogs)

And possible even skeletal animals(they could be extremely hard to hit with arrows to like all undead should(skeletons anyway))