Elsweyr or Black Marsh would be a smart move imo to bring a boatload of alien air in the AAA fantasy RPG genre. All the other developers who compete in this swords and magic market will be so jealous to see Bethesda put an Argonian as main protagonist, their ordinary humans with big swords and boring helmets will then look so petty.

Please, please PLEASE keep Illusion exactly as it is in Skyrim. It has never been better.

Add things to it if you want, just please don't take anything away!

I agree with Quo Vadis about Black Marsh or Elsweyr.

What about being able to travel all of Tamriel or Black marsh? And keep the perks, and perhaps bring back the Dwemer?

Okay, I have a kind of idea for a slightly more "tangible" alchemy system.
Basically, instead of giving each ingredient multiple effects, there would be two types of ingredients: Liquids, or "bases", And modifers (Solids which would be crushed into powders and mixed in, mostly plants.).
The bases would provide a basic effect, and the modifers would (You guessed it) modify this effect. I know it sound kind of simple, but just bear with me.
Heres an example of how this would would work with a few ingredients:

Bases:
-Blood: Inflicts elements of whichever being it was harvested from (Creatures, monsters, sentient races, etc.)

-Venom: The base element for all poisions. (Harvested from spiders, snakes, scorpions, etc.)

-Nectar: The base element for all healing potions. (Harvested from plants.)

Modifers:
-White-Red Mushroom: Related to eyes.

-Bonemeal: Related to bones.

-Lily-pad: Related to water.

Potion combinations:
-Feline Blood+WR Mushroom: Temporay Cat eyes. (Improved night vision.)

-Venom+WR Mushroom: Temporay blindness. (Good for theives.)

-Nectar+WR Mushroom: Temporay improved vision. (Better accuracy.)

-Fish Blood+WR Mushroom: Temporay "Fish" eyes. (Better underwater vision, blurry out-of-water vision.)

-Feline blood+Bonemeal: Temporarily grow claws. (Increased Hand-to-Hand damage.)

-Venom+Bonemeal: Temporarily Weakened bones. (More susceptibility to blunt weapons. Higher chance of crippling limbs if that's in TES 6.)

-Nectar+Bonemeal: Temporarily strengthened bones. (^ That but backwards.)

-"Fish" Blood+ Lily Pad: Temporary gills. (Breath in water, suffocate on land.)

-Venom+Lily Pad: Invoke temporary random coughing fits. (For the duration of the poision's effect, the subject has will start coughing at random times. Each of these coughing fits lasts for about 3 seconds, and briefly takes control away from the player/NPC. Leavin them them temporarily vulnerable.)

-Nectar+Lily Pad: Temporay Stronger lungs. (Increased stamina.)



Keep in mind that you wouldn't know what any of these ingredients did, which would lead to fun experimentation. I feel like if they added enough ingredients, this system could be pretty fun. (Ones that augment various organs, skills, etc.)
And, yes. Many of the potion's effects would probably overlap, be unpractical, or have no real, useful, gameplay purpose. But that would just make it feel THAT much more realistic and immersive. If EVERY possible potion has some kind of convinient gameplay purpose, like Skyrim, everthing just feels so... fake. It's the whipped cream on top, as well as the milkshake itself, that make the game. Those small, things they don't HAVE to put in but do, that make all the difference.

P.S. Lily-Pad was supposed to augment your respiratory system, not "water.

I think that would be an ace idea death puppy. It sounds way better than what Skyrim has.

Yeah that's a pretty interesting idea for a new alchemy system.

For either ES 5.5 or 6, I have some ideas:

1. It strikes me as a bit unbelievable that the Dwemer vanished. Consider: they were around when the Nords first invaded, kicked the Dragon Priests and Dragons in the teeth, and at the same time (it seems) were doing their best to make the Snow Elves extinct. Per the lore, the snow elves ran to the Dwarves/deep elves and asked for sanctuary, which was granted but in traitorous fashion thru enslavement.
Now if I was one of the Dwemer, I'd be viewing these Snow Elf - massacring and Dragon & Dragon Priest stomping Nords with trepidation. So: it would be logical for them to DIG DEEPER - go deeper underground and abandon their cities, which we explore as ruins. The Falmer wandering those ruins strike me as escaped slaves - notice how they are moving out of the Dwemer ruins and into caves and Nord ruins all across the map. It would seem a logical progression of the storyline if the Dwemer were actually safe within much deeper realms, their hordes of Falmer still enslaved except for the occasional escapee. Furthermore, one would think that the Dwemer would now be thinking that the Nords - embroiled in a civil war, under threat from the Thalmor and the Empire, fighting the Forsworn, their lands overrun with bandits, and now the Dragons wreaking havoc - were now extremely vulnerable.
Long story short - the Skyrim followup should see Dwarves emerging from the depths with hordes of Falmer and all sorts of wierd capabilities, ready to take Skyrim from the Nords. Their capabilities would have to be modified and enhanced - after all, a civilization that built all those robots and gear grinding machines and glowing lamps, still operating after thousands of years, can almost certainly make much better armor, weapons and metals than the junk they left hanging around in their abandoned cities (it really does strike me as bizarre that the Dwemer make the weakest collection of weapons and armor in the game.)

2. The dragons, after emerging from their long sleep, would be in a weakened condition, wouldn't they? The Skyrim successor needs to vamp them up, to turn them into real city-threatening terrors. Frankly, it should be impossible for a single character under level 30 or 40 to have any chance of slaying a dragon.

3. The Thalmor need to be explored and tested more. Consider: their strike against the empire seemed lightning swift and very successful, yet the lore says the Imperials took back their capital. The Thalmor also seem to be fanatically obsessed with the famous High Elf Slaying Talos. This suggests to me that their invasion, though tactically successful, was so costly to them that they are actually very vulnerable. Clearly they have no shortage of enemies, too - the Bosmer, for one. If I remember the lore correctly, it sounds like the Khaijit, Argonians, Redguard and Orcs have a beef with the Thalmor as well.
Something else: why wouldn't the Thalmor try to maximize the Empire's burden in Skyrim by providing support to factions like the Forsworn? It seems to me that the current storyline provides fantastic opportunities for political intrigue and asymmetric warfare for the Nords, Thalmor and Imperials.

4. Wars of the Gods. Example - Malog Bal and Boethiah clearly have a beef with each other. How about a war between the two? There's a LOT that could be explored with this concept.

5. Angry Daedra punishing recalcitrant champions. I have all the Daedra artifacts but don't use any of them. Why aren't they coming after me?

6. New, deep quest lines for the Thieve's Guild and Dark Brotherhood. There's just so many things that could be done - conflict between the two, a merger, conflict between their governing Daedra, all sorts of skullduggery involving Jarls, the Thalmor, the Empire, the Forsworn, danger from the Pentulus Oculatum acting as a kind of FBI, etc etc...........

Anyone else got ideas? Exploring these sorts of themes and ideas is tons of fun.

I might as well practice my English here (it is not my first language) by writing a huge post.
Oh by the way, this is a completely unreasonable list of wishes, none of this will happen. It is rather a list of how my dream TES would be.

1. Skills
- Combine Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind. I want skills, attributes AND perks. Some perks are gained by level your skill up (like in Oblivion) and some have to be chosen (Skyrim). It might be difficult to balance, but make sure that at least the player is underpowered at the highest level on the highest difficulty.
- Long/short blades, or some other more complex skill structure for weapons.
- More magic, more types, more effects etc
- Classes, but handle them differently.

2. Dialogues
- Have Skyrim-like dialogues with voice and an option to open a dialogue box (unvoiced) like the ones in Morrowind for those who want to explore the lore and world further.
- More lore connection. The best parts of Skyrim was talking to one of the refugees from Morrowind.

3. Quest markers
- Include two modes that the player can switch between (also include the option to lock your save to either one)
Option 1: Skyrim-style GPS with visible on-screen markers
Option 2: Force the player to use the dialogue box to give directions. Also include an option where you ask the NPC to mark the general quest area on your map (either for a fee or this makes the NPC like you less etc) but without any on-screen markers so you still have to navigate by map.
- Explorable map. Just like in Morrowind. I do not even want to know where the biggest towns are!

4. Quests
- With a dialogue box, even simple fetch-quests can be given a deeper structure and you can reintroduce the kind of "open" quests, like the ones where you are to investigate what happened to someone or find out where someone is etc.
- Factions should recruit based on skill level on certain skills, but not on attributes. There should be plenty of rivaling factions, making impossible to join one if have already joined the rival faction etc.
- Longer faction quests, where the main story line is introduced more subtly than in Skyrim.

5. Battle
- DICE ROLLS
Yes, I want them back. No, I am not an idiot.
Add miss animations. If the opponent wears heavy armor a miss will mean that you hit the armor (or he parries with his sword or guards with his shield) and a hit means that you will hit flesh and the opponent will take damage.
If he wears a light armor (or no armor) the opponent should evade the attack when it misses.
A similar system could work for archery.

6. Cities/towns
- Lower the quality of the graphics for towns and make them open again, and way bigger. Morrowind has beautiful cities and towns, even though they are simple in geometry. Just add some nice light effects.
- Uniqe NPC names. TONS of them, both in towns and dungeons. Not all of them need a backstory, but it is a psychologically different thing to attack and kill a named NPC instead of a "bandit" or a "bandit leader".

7. Equipment / weapons / items
- Items: go for quantity rather than quality: geometrically simple objects, but tons of them
- Import old models from Oblivion and Skyrim (of course, even a simple silver ring could be very valuable in Elsweyr if it comes from Skyrim)
- Make everyday items worth more and make it possible to sell stolen things to any merchant that like you enough.
- Weapons and armor: more, more more. More types and more designs of each type (like the fur armor in Skyrim), they do not have to be detailed.
- Go back to multiple slots and the ability to equip stuff under and over the armor.
- Let there be (small) variations of quality of weapons, so that all "Iron Short Swords" are not statistically identical and do not look exactly the same.
- More unique or rare items but not randomly distributed nor scaled

8. Misc
- Place loot by hand, make it overpowered if you have to in order to make exploration fun again. No scaling or very little.
- It is better to make 200 interesting locations, rather than 500 boring locations. Fewer but better dungeons. The "first" dungeon in Skyrim was awesome despite that it was very simple... the rest were very similar to each other.
- Morrowind style journal with both journal and quest log, but make it easier to use
- Build the game as if there was no fast travel (for example, NPCs should give proper directions to follow), let the player chose before the game starts if he want fast travel or not.
- Keep the current crafting system but balance it.
- Less repeat-forever quests (do not go overboard with Radiant Quests).
- A UI that looks and feels as if it belongs to a fantasy game. The one in Skyrim is nice but does not fit the world at all. The art work used for classes and loading screens etc in Oblivion was absolutely beautiful and fits the world perfectly.
- Food is a great idea for RPing, but allow the player to chose to activate a hardcoe mode, where they have to eat and sleep regularly.

Ok, that is all I can think of for now. I bet I will come up with something new as soon as I press the "Post" button. =)

This is by far my favorite in your list, this thing alone would make the game 10xbetter for me. The scaling of loot makes things very boring as a treasure hunter.

With hand-placed loot, the best stuff should be guarded by tough enemies so you can't just waltz in at level 5 and get the ancient sword of asskicking.

Even so, exploration in Skyrim is rewarding because the dungeons are better designed this time around.

Hey guys check mine and see. Sorry if it's a little hazy.

My theory is that TES VI will probably be set in Summerset Isle and that the Thalmor probably will play a majot part in the MQ.

TES:VI should be in the Summerset Isle. I think that with the Thalmor being dikes they could make for a successful story line about them being typical cocky super villains, including hubris and all that jazz. Probably relating the plotline to the Eye of Magnus and them obliterating the Psijic order would be cool.

That said I want more weapon types and more weapon skills. I want to see Crossbows and Spears with dedicated skills (archery is cool and all but I think that ranged damage is limited to only bows and destruction magic). A return to the Oblivion mechanic for magic would be nice, but not something I'd make a big hubbub over. The posts about more mixmatch armor sounds really cool, I haven't played Morrowind or Daggerfall, but they sound pretty interesting in that regard.

The only way the next game could be set in Summerset Isles is if the Thalmor are no longer in power because at the current time no other race is allowed into Summerset Isles, and I don't know about you or anyone else but I don't want to have to be a High Elf.

I recently started Morrowind again. And I remember the locations of the Daedric masks for example were either guarded (like you said) or kind of hidden. I like the second option as well. Places were you are not able to go easily (you need some prerequisites like Jump or Levitation).

As I've said before, if it's in Summerset Isle, the villain should be Magnus.

I hope Bethesda drops the whole superhero thing, or else we're going to be playing as a demi-god, fighting the daedric princes, in the next game. I just want to be normal.

Story idea: So, like, it takes place in the future. After the Aldmeri Dominion has used some giant, world-shattering, near-apocalypse magical weapon to perform mass Genocide on part of the human provinces, destroying part of the continent, and winning the 2nd Great War. Under the rule of the Thalmor, all the provinces live in poverty. All, that is, except the Summerset Isles: Where the Thalmor enjoys the riches and spoils created by their newly conquered lands. To add insult to injury every year the Dominion takes one teenaged boy and one girl from each of the provinces, and forces them to fight each other until only one is left alive. During this yearly event, they use magic to broadcast the events across the land, forcing them to watch their children be slaughtered. It is in this dystopian future where the game takes place.

You'd play as one of the children picked, and have the option to choose your age (12-18), and home province along with all the standard customization options. Before the games start, however, you and your province-mate escape. And in doing so, become INCREDIBLY wanted by the government. To avoid capture, torture, and eventual public execution, you join the rebellion aginst the Thalmor . And thus starts the main quest.

The game would take place in the Summerset Isles, incredibly magically and technologically advanced due to their siphoning all the resources from their surrounding provinces.


(Sorry, I probably should have made an actual contribution. But I just couldn't resist. )

I have other ideas for storylines, but there's also a few more mundane things that need to be addressed as well:
1. Followers - they can be a pain to manage. I have found that the best thing to do with a follower is to merely use them as a mule. I leave them behind while I go off killing dungeon inhabitants, and go and fetch the follower to carry the loot once the coast is clear. If I don't do that, the follower will often initiate attack while I'm sneaking forward, or get in the way of one of my arrows, or do something else deeply stupid. There needs to be a better command system, such as 'hang back and use those staves I gave you for ranged attack', 'stay back and use your bow', and so forth.
2. There should be more dialog options with some of the opponents. For instance - why do bandits ALWAYS attack? Couldn't they be recruited or pvssyd with under some circumstances? Same for dragons - there ought to be more opportunities to talk. Example: the dragon that appears after you Unrelenting Force Shout at that big golden globe hanging from the central fortress in Blackreadh - why can't the dragonborn have a chat with the flying lizard and maybe help him escape?
3. Why can't I take a boat - even a canoe or kayak - out onto the water, either in lakes or the ocean? Common sense says that swimming in the northern ocean - in near freezing water - wearing armor would get even an incredibly fit person dead within a few minutes.
4. Injury and weight factors in motion - the more you carry, the slower you should be and the quicker you should tire. I think the game does allow players who are lightly loaded to run a bit faster, but I haven't noticed a stamina effect. Also - if, during a fight, a player or NPC is injured in a leg or arm, it should be reflected in their ability to move and fight.

More coming soon, including more storyline thoughts..........

No one will figure out what where your idea came from...

But at least it is better than being the hero that saves the world, that is very cliche, and has gotten old.

Should the game be in the Summerset Isles, I ask for the ruins of the Crystal Tower. Last time we were there was in Arena and I had quite a bit of fun exploring it. If I recall correctly, it was destroyed during the Oblivion Crisis, so an explorable ruin with some reference with Arena would be an awesome thing to see.

I'd like Elswyer, for the seas, magic to be more advanced, more roleplay friendly, to add a lot more to the current lore and to give all races equal screen time! =)

Also, don't have me as the player character, be the hero. Like in Oblivion, you were there to help Martin along the way.

More depth to the quest-lines than was seen in Skyrim. My character did nine quests to become Archmage in Skyrim. In Oblivion, the player had just earned entry into the Arcane University and was beginning to work up the ladder at the nine quest mark.

Better AI for followers. We don't need followers running in front of our already swinging weapons in close combat (or make them like Diablo II followers who could not be hit by the player).

Seems like you read the hunger games too many times...