Greetings, fellow Elder Scrolls fans. Much like you, I eagerly await the awesomesauce that is Skyrim, so that I can pour it into my cereal every morning. While we wait, though, I'm going to ramble on about the things I hope are included (or cut) from Skyrim:

1. A long main quest that branches based upon player choices with multiple endings. Not Fallout 3 "multiple endings", either; I'm requesting -actual- choices that will vary from character to character based upon his or her moral compass.

2. More armor and weapon models. Yes, this is fairly obvious and I'm sure everyone feels the same way. But Oblivion didn't have nearly enough, and the highest light armor made your character look like a polished, slime-covered insect. I'd like some options other than that, this time around. Please?

3. Level scaling like Fallout 3, not Oblivion. Yeah, they said they're doing this, but I want to give a thumbs up and approve. So.. :thumbsup: *I approve!*

4. More food/drinks (especially PIE!), and an optional hardcoe mode that requires you to eat, drink, sleep, and poop (no not really). Oh, and can we not put food in a blender to make potions this time? That was ridiculous.

5. More actual characters. I'm defining "character" as someone who is more than just a vessel for a single quest who says nothing but "Do x for me, I'll pay you for it." and then "Thanks!" once you're done. Why go through the effort of making the environment so realistic and believable if you intend to shatter immersion the moment you actually speak with someone? Fallout 3 had a lot of empty vessel characters who served no purpose and had no personality beyond the bare bones necessary for their single quest (the vast majority of the characters were like that, I'd argue). New Vegas doesn't have this problem, so can we have a cast of colorful characters like in New Vegas, instead?

6. More quests. Compare the quest list in Fallout 3, and the quest list in New Vegas. One is massive, one is not. Can you please aim for more than ten quests this time around? Pretty, pretty please?

7. Nord brothels. Yes, you read that correctly. The Nords are a large race of lusty, mountain drunkards.. right? So it stands to reason that they would have brothels. No need for graphic scenes, just another thing to burn coin down and increase immersion.

8. Romance interests. Yes, I know this isn't Fable or Dragon Age. I'm grateful you're going to take the time to point that out anyway, of course, but I am aware. I'm not requesting deep love quests or anything, just characters the protagonist has the option of bringing home (assuming your character has a home), and marrying/living with. Just another simple addition that would add to immersion and role-playing capability.

9. Speaking of housing.. more and bigger houses, please! With a better 'move item' system so we can properly display our various dungeon trophies in our home! Of course there should be cheap options, too, but one fun thing about these sorts of games is saving up lots of coin and spending it all on a big mansion. In fact, more gold sinks in general would be nice. There just wasn't much worth buying in Oblivion after you had Rosethorn Hall.


TLDR version: Well, if you don't like my suggestions for a better Skyrim, what are yours? Thanks for any and all feedback.

Multiple endings will make it hard to make a sequel, they can't pull the Warp in the west trick again, not after only three games.

I would like to see a bigger development of the hardcoe mode or role playing mode. I think these are fantastic idea that can accommodate for every different type of player. Custom ending that allow the player to influence the outcome of the main story are also great ideas. Some of the best stories are the stories that we make for ourselves and Skyrim should do what it can to accommodate that.

Tessellation

Er... elaborate, please? I don't quite follow what you're requesting.

I think number 5 is the only one there I'd really want to see. More quests/weapons/armor all always accepted, but I think there were quite a lot in previous games.
If there was a hardcoe mode (which I'd like), I would like it be totally different to F:NV. Something like the following:
Water can remain the same as it was in F:NV. Food should only be able to be fully satisfied by actually having a full meal, maybe at your house, a cafe, or at a camp - an apple eaten every 6 hours should not be enough. In F:NV you could get away with 1 hour of sleep every 4 days or something and still have no negative effects on your character - it should be more like 6 hours per day and slight negative effects with anything less. All of this stuff should be measured with decreasing stats, warnings every so often, and stuff like blurred vision and slower movement at later stages - no bars or numbers, at all (this only existed in F:NV because the pip-boy is a computer that monitors your dehydration and such in numbers). No compass or quest markers. No fast-travelling. Diseases, poisons, etc. should be more crippling.

Why wouldn't you want to see the others? More houses that you can decorate? Brothels? Love interests? A better and more custom main quest? The first three of those, at least, would require a fairly minimal (relatively speaking) amount of development time to implement. I admit the main quest forking would take longer, but why not? New Vegas did it.

I wouldn't mind them being in the game, but I just don' think they'd add much - I don't think TES is the the kind of game to have things like love interests and brothels. I think one house in each town is enough, but what I would like to see is more customizable houses, not just: "Pay 20000 and you can have furniture!". Better, more custom main quest would be good as long as the endings (if there were multiple endings) weren't just different voice-overs stitched together. I gave number five a special mention because it's something that I think would really benefit the game if added.

Cloth physics, cloaks, separate pauldrons, clothes we can see underneath armor (I don't care about enchanting...limit what you can enchant).

Also, it'd be cool to have a vigilante group who murder criminals.

actually they could branch the main quest out, choosing different ways gives you different quests, it doesn't mean the ending will be drastically changed, just means the way you get there is different

dont mind the others being in there, never played hardcoe mode in FONV probably not play it in skyrim, but seeing that it is cold there should be more water and less need for you to drink it opposed to NV

spear,crossbow,spear,crossbow...

I'd also like this, but with reservations: when modders added pies to Oblivion, they tended to be daft fruit-filled things instead of proper meat pies. I somehow can't imagine a delicate slice of cherry pie and low-fat cream finding a warm welcome in Skyrim when a hungry and bad tempered nord wants to see two pigs and a cow wrapped in pastry served with a bucket of gravy and no veg.

Most of the other things I also agree with. I think I'm slightly ambivalent about more houses, but I'd like to see better ones: as much as I liked Arborwatch, once you were inside it didn't exactly feel like something you'd expect to find in the posh end of one of Cyrodiil's more affluent towns. And that was in spite of the inside area actually being somewhat larger than its exterior suggested. Rosethorn Hall was at least bigger but quite dull; so bigger and interesting would be good. Not so big that it can't be adequately utilised, though.

I would like the idea of Multiple main quest lines. I always thought that it would have been great in Oblivion if you had an option at the begining to choose whether to be found by the Emperor in the cell or found by the Mythic Dawn and recruted to kill the Emperor when the Ambush happens. Doing the Killing would lead to a fliped main Quest where you worked with Dagon to open have him nter the world. Reguardless of your choice both sides would lead to Martin's sacrifice since that is an entegral point in history, this would simply give a possibility for evil caracters to still do the main quest with out becoming the Hero they do not want to be and it would add replayability

I was thinking more along the lines of... Key Lime. Or apple. Yum!

Seconded.

I pretty much agree with everything you said, although I haven't played Fallout but it's becoming more and more obvious I need to get on that.
I'm ALWAYS a light armor character and the glass armor in Oblivion was so sadly hideous. Especially when I personally thought the spikey Morrowind glass armour was super sweet. And maybe just a few more random options for armor that are completely different and unique, maybe specific to the creatures in Skyrim. (Such as the Draugh medium armor in Morrowind, I though it was really cool, although I don't endorse bringing medium armor skill back...)
It would be cool if they bought the enchanted snow-wolf/bear pelt armor back like they had in Bloodmoon.

And I think Romance is a relatively easy and awesome thing to add. And frankly how can you not have it if children are confirmed in the game? It seems logical to me that if NPC's can have kids, you could. Although I don't think there should be anything overtly sixual, it would just be a very nice homey touch to be able to have a home and somebody to make it less lonely. I'm also all for Brothels, because Desele's House of Earthly Delights was awesome. (And I'm a girl, for the record. And I definitely don't think it was too lewd or too M-rated..) I trust Bethesda to keep it tasteful.

I would like more home options as well, just because I didn't like how there was only one way to decorate. Frankly I think it would be easy to implement a system where you could own ANY home, albeit maybe you would have to kick the current owner out. It would just make the Morrowind way of doing it slightly more 'Official', but then I guess the main reason that couldn't be done in Oblivion was because of those ridiculous guards roaming everywhere, but that's a whole different issue...
I made a thread a while back on the 'move item system' ..so terrible. I'm sure they figured out something better for that, because that was definitely one of the most frustrating things for me. Pretty much killed any incentive I had to decorate my house at all, which was too bad because I did like the new Display Cases they added. I would love to be able to customize the interior of my house, even if it just meant picking between a couple color theme options..

<_<

The only time an apple should appear in a pie is to enhance the lumps of pig accompanying it.

Apple pie with "Skyrim Iced Cream(tm!)" on top. The Skyrim version of ice cream being, of course, snow with milk poured atop it.

Now I want to play Skyrim.. and bake a pie. :unsure2:

Bah. Apple pies may predate mediaeval times, but I still think they're a travesty. The apples should be used to make cider (or "zoidrr" to approximate its West Country pronunciation), by which I mean the very alcoholic stuff with bits of dead rat and potato floating in it and which makes you go blind. Which is a much better use for them: something suitably brain-numbing with which to wash down a traditional meat pie made with intestines, scabs and gristle.

Maybe they should have cider in Skyrim, too: forget that honey-sweetened mead, that's for young children. :celebrate:

Psh. You and your meat pies. They can't put pigs or goats in the pie! The brothels would go out of business without those customer-lures!

*...hides*

Now you're just being silly. Everyone knows that the brothels employ sheep.

Baaaa.

Yes, romance. Nothin' says luvin' like somethin' from the oven...and apple pie says it best!

One of the characters I am comtemplating will be a bearded, somewhat rotund Friar Tuck type, who's main passion is cooking, and of course sampling the savory results.

..waitwut? I think I missed an innuendo there somewhere.