My only wish is that they don't streamline it even more. It's understandable why they did that with Skyrim and now they've got a huge budget and audience for their next game. Hopefully they'll use it to make a fantastic game that appeals to both casual and veteran TES players. In a TES game, the most important thing to me is the immersive, deep and believable fantasy world that you can interact with and live in. If that aspect is ignored, I think TES is as good as dead. It's as if you actually want to live in this kind of world, whether it's as a hero, a simple traveler, an alchemist or a peasant - a good set of RPG elements is also a must.

Sure just give me more of the same but fix the little bugs. Why mess with success.

How many developers have we seen get a big head from a winner then head off into some pet project that bombs big time.

Will they be able to top Oblivion? Will they be able to top Fallout 3? Will they be able to top Skyrim?

The thing about talking about how to top the previous Bethesda release is that there isnt really a defined metric of what makes a great Bethesda game that everyone accepts. The closest thing I can think of is just straight commerical success, in which case the pattern holds that Fallout 4 will top Skyrim, and TES VI will top Fallout 4. Sales may be the only thing that I think everyone agrees upon as being one metric of success, but there is certainly a lot of other metrics, and often times with games as diverse as the ones Bethesda makes the majority of it comes down to personal preference.

Personally, I think that Skyrim topped Morrowind, whereas Oblivion is kinda a black sheep of the entire series. Although some people may agree, I'll never get anywhere near approaching a majority consensus that my opinions on quality are indisputable fact. With the games changing so much between releases and the releases themselves being spread out over decades its extremely hard to say that, quality-wise, this or that in Bethesda's library is 100% better or worse than this or that of the same library.

So, will they top Skyrim? I imagine their next game will sell even more, so I would say it would be topped on that front. The epicness of the Last Dragonborn and the barbarian choirs coursing through the entire province of the north? Well, there is no way that can be topped completely, because what defines that as being the top is entirely subjective and based on personal taste. When I see the next Bethesda release, ill have to decide for myself if it stacks up to my favourites.

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Exactly, screw dragons, they were just one of the many gimmicks of Skyrim and I found them really annoying. I really hope dragons do not come back, if they do I hope it is like an easter egg nod type thing back to Skyrim where we meet a dragon somewhere or see one fly by but it is not an enemy.

This would be awesome...

I was wondering today if and when it will be possible to speak with our own voice to highly "AI" npcs, to interact with them almost as real persons...

Nevermind, just daydreaming.

Dragons are in all likelihood here to stay, but not in the (Admittedly, bloated) capacity Skyrim threw at the player. I expect that their spawn rate will be severely toned down or otherwise left off as a handful of unique super-bosses. Maybe both.

I certainly hope not, I found Skyrim was a much better game without the dragons. Again, if dragons must come back I hope it is super rare that we come across them, maybe just as super rare bosses.

Yes - but a very limited number. No less than 2, no more than 4.

It provides the opportunity to learn a very limited and restricted amount of Thu'um. They would also serve as plot devices or quest providers.

Again - not zero and not tons of them, but a tiny number.

I agree with this, except the Thu'um part. We should not have the Thu'um in the next game, unless we are the dragonborn again and that would be lame if they reused the same hero.

The only way I could see Thu'um returning without the inclusion of the dragonborn would be making it an exclusive, limited power for Nords.

Rolling out my "wish list"...

- Unarmored skill making a comeback

- The need to repair arms and armor once more

- A return of the Enchanter. I'm honestly at a loss why this was removed.

- No more constellation skill trees. They're neat enough and thematic given Skyrim's narrative, but more direct control over the perks would be nice. For instance, I shouldn't have to take "junk perks" simply to unlock a higher skill level perk. The perks were a nice change from the flat stat game, but still needlessly restrictive.

- More armor options. The slots are there in the game already - the creation kit and various mods show that much. Don't rely on the user base to incorporate armor diversity. If I want to go essentially unarmored except my shield arm, which is sleeved in heavy armor, I should be more then able to do that.

- A return to Oblivion style dialogue engine. Skyrim was a great experiment in dynamic NPC interaction. I don't fault Bethesda in the slightest for changing things up in that regard...the problem is it resulted in NPCs becoming even worse then the "same-y" feeling Morrowind NPCs or the Mudcrab obsessed Radiant AI Oblivion NPCs. Skyrim NPCs became...static. After three years, I can practically quote Balgruuf's lines by heart. In the end, I miss the awkward Radiant-driven NPC conversations that were ultimately dynamic and rumor filled...as opposed to the same conversations being repeated daily in the Whiterun Market.

- More Daedric Quests in the vein of Skyrim please! Loved how Daedric Quests were handled - and how morally grey they were - in Skyrim.

- Incorporate a "hardcoe mode" in the vein of Fallout: New Vegas. Bare bones Needs function (Eat/Sleep/Drink...you put Inns and Taverns in the game already, so why not?), and makes potions effect over time instead of instantly. A nice balance for those that prefer the old style of Elder Scrolls potion intake and those that prefer the new style.

- Similarly, the compass should be more like the compass in Fallout 3/New Vegas. Instead of magically knowing what kind of interesting location we're coming up on as seen in Oblivion/Skyrim, just a notation that "Hey, there's something this way worth looking at" without us knowing what it is.

I wish Bethesda would bring back the spell maker, Skyrim just did not feel like a true TES game without it.

I actually felt it was vastly improved. Or, at least, the problems with its magic did not stem from the lack of spell crafting, rather it was the lack to an even scaling curve between magic damage and level/difficulty.

The spell crafting mechanic that has existed prior was cumbersome, easily abused, unrealistic within the setting's established rules, and all round not-good.

Perhaps it's rose tinted glasses, but I rather enjoyed the freedom the spell/enchantment/alchemy crafting systems Morrowind had in place. Even if it breaks the game, I still want the freedom to do so.

The problem i always had with it wasn't so much the freedom to play... but in having too MUCH freedom. The beauty of spell crafting is in the ability to combine different effects, but 99% of the time it was just used to make more powerful spells without having to track down someone who sold them, or weaker spells just to train your skill. Its implementation also limited the way effects could be worked into the game, and Skyrim in fact contains MORE effects than previous titles, they're just rolled into varying spells to create different results, instead of all Fire spells doing the same thing.

Don't get me wrong, as i've said before i would love a spell crafting system return... but not the old one.

Should enemies be shown on the compass? I think not, its more exciting when a bandit archer hides in the woods shooting at you, same thing when exploring dungeons full with Falmer.

I don't think anything should be shown on the compass but north, south, east and west.

I would like to see more races in the elder scrolls series! Now i know some races are "evil" but there are some cool races out there in the rest of the world.

Like the sea elves would be awesome to see in a future game.

Any of the races from Akavir, though i know that nothing has been confirmed on that subject.

Maybe a canine race, i know a few people that would like to see something like that, and I remember something about a nomadic fox race, that diapered in like the first or second era. I would love to see something like that in the next installment, but i doubt that would work well with the lore, but who knows.

I would be fine just seeing them in game let alone playing them. The first time i saw the snow elf in the Dawnguard DLC i flipped out!

Of course all of this mite not work well with the lore :/

I would agree with this if Bethesda makes it so that quest givers actually give details about where to go. You can't have no quest markers if you have quests like Oblivion and Skyrim were there is no description. But Morrowind's journal was really confusing since it updated no matter what the quest was and really messed everything up.

I would like to see quests that have no markers, but the NPC writes down where to go or gives directions on a sheet of paper and this information is all sorted by it's quest's name. Unlike Morrowind where your journal was just the most recent quest updated and it didn't say what quest it was.

A lot of things were broken in older games. Spell-crafting being a big offender on the list, but it didn't need to be nixed for that, just reworked. I think it should be about creating new effects by combining the effects of the in-game spells in new ways. We should not be able to determine the magnitude of spells, though. Like you said, that led to just using spellcrafting to make more powerful versions of the same spells, which is not what it should be for.

I think it could take a hint from how enchanting worked in Skyrim. Certain spell effects wouldn't be able to be combined with certain other effects just like certain enchantments couldn't be put on certain pieces of equipment. Both to prevent over-stacking of similar effects and (probably more so in this case) to prevent us from creating spells that cause issues with the game engine. Not sure what that would be exactly, but I'm sure it could (and would) happen. The magnitude of the spell you create would be based on your skill in spellcrafting rather than being something you set yourself, and the more effects you combine, the weaker each individual effect would become and you would start off with only being able to combine two effects with perks increasing how many effects you can combine and how much each effect weakens the others.

The Compass is a modern convention that, frankly, i don't think is going anywhere. There are some die-hards who complain about it, but the overwhelming majority of players seem to favour it as a mechanic. From Borderlands to Dying Light to Dragon Age, to GTA, it's here, and it's not going anywhere. Complaining about that fact isn't going to help matters, or change things. What we should be talking about isn't how much we hate it (i actually prefer the idea, though its execution in Skyrim is poor) but rather how to make it acceptable.

Frankly, i think Skyrim is the only game that really fails to execute the compass mechanism well. Every other game gives you, at most, a radius to search, rather than leading you right to the point in question. Enemy tracking isn't generally common, nor is pre-discovery identification of locations. This is one of those problems where just doing what everyone else is already doing solves almost every problem.

The Compass mechanic, frankly, saves problems with voice acting (Lines are often recorded some time either before or after quest design is finished, so things can be changed without the actual recorded dialogue matching) and cuts down on inventory clutter (imagine the notes!) and is an immensely helpful resources for multinational games (where translation problems can cause frustration).

I generally agree, but then there's the issue of time. Time and resources are always limited, and you have to consider how long it would take to rework that system. If the time just isn't there, is it better to leave a horribly broken system in, or cut it out?

But details about where to go are also available on the map. I don't know about anybody else but I found locations like Dimhollow Crypt and NPCs like Gunmar (who can be in 13 locations) by looking at my map, not at my compass.

But that said, I like your sheet-of-paper idea. I've been advocating something like that for years.

Well, I would say multiple sheets of paper aren't how they should be handled in the inventory. A quest journal with a fold out map in your inventory could work, as long as it is designed in such a way that you can find things easily.

As for voice acting, the directions don't need to be spoken. We just need a, "here, let me write it down for you..." line.

I definitely dislike how much information the compass currently gives. The only thing about it I never paid any attention to in Skyrim was the actual compass points themselves (North, South, East, West)! I agree that that is all the compass should show.

More mundane quests could have pretty precise directions with easily identifiable landmarks but for the more epic ones that require you to go right out into the wilderness could involve quest givers that apologetically can't be overly specific about where something is but maybe suggest a nearby traveller camp or outpost where you might be able to get more information if you get lost. This would bring in an investigative element to exploration that would be truly engaging. There was a bit of this in Morrowind and I'd love to see it return.

I think I remember a line in one of Beth's 'Making of' videos that bothers me. Im not sure if it was for Skyrim or Oblivion but it was said by Todd Howard and he said something along the lines of, 'let's face it, these games are mostly about killing monsters'. Basically, I know the quote will be from many years ago now but I really hope it's not driving the ethos of their development. Morrowind proved they can be so much more than that.

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, if it is Mod's please move it.

I keep hearing rumors that a private ES6 teaser was shown back in January at CES. I wanted to ask here so I could get the truth not the lie and this is the only forum I actually trust with TES.

Some things i would like too see in next tes

Pack leaders-add wolves that are tougher to kill in packs (similar to bandit leaders). Same would go with bear caves, giants, mudcrabs, etc

More creatures that attack from water

Terror birds and more creatures from the mammoth era

Banners-so many banners are bland and torn. Have followers comment on them.

Trevas watch-cool quest. Problem is it resets. Build on this and make it something like helgen reborn.

If you make a deal with daedra and then betray them for a rival then cultists should go after you. Mini quests would be needed to stop cultists

More joinable factions such as agents of stendarr.

More smaller treasure chests. Theres a few but would make more sense for smaller ones

One or more typesof creaturesthat only appear/attack at night

We have apples so how about apple trees