Let me start of by saying TES are great games, and I enjoy playing them. I haven't put NEARLY as much time into them as others, as I only began enjoying them this past few months when I bought Skyrim. I love the freedom, the concept, the world, the history, the depth... everything, almost.

Combat could be 'better'. Nothing is wrong with the way it is, so why fix what isn't broken? Because it could be better. And by 'combat' I'm not talking about perks, skills, and abilities - cause I'm cool with that, I actually like all the numbers and calculations.

I'm talking about the visual combat. The way it looks, and effects it has on immersion. Now my preferred class is Warrior. Give me some standard armor, a sword, and a shield and I'm set. My point is - melee combat is a BIG part of my gameplay. Now I've played Ranger classes and Mage classes (albeit for a few minutes) and they don't suffer as much as a Warrior class does from this 'visual combat' thing.

Take a sword and swing it at your opponent. Apart from a simple reduction in health, an occasional "ARRGH!", and slight blood, nothing really happens. It's just a bunch of hacking and slashing without any reaction to it, until one guy falls to the floor. Personally, it breaks immersion for me. I'd like to see the enemy react to it, like he staggers back a few feet or something. I just want to see the effects of my weapon on the enemy.

And I know Bethesda can do it, cause they already implement it... somewhat. Shield-Bashing opponents immerses me into the gameplay because it looks like I actually did it. I saw my shield make contact with the enemy, and their body reacted to it by stumbling back a bit. The 'Power-Shot' perk you get in archery also does this. You shoot your arrow, and your enemy's body reacts to it. He stumbles back a bit. I saw my arrow make contact with the enemy, and he reacted to it.

Does anyone else see what I'm saying? And yeah I know, it's no big deal, but it'd help the immersion for me.

So you are saying you want enemies to stagger when you hit them. Your next paragraph points out that this already happens. So. . . you want them to stagger further back or for longer periods of time? How much stagger are you looking for?

Your gripe about health point attrition combat is one I share. Location/limb damage would be a good start to solving this, and this is a very common suggestion that we see in the forums. Personally, I'd take it a bit further and get rid of HP all together.

I don't like the idea that it takes X amount of sword hits to kill a low level character, and several times that amount to kill a higher level character. An axe (gawd, why does my spellcheck not like 'axe'?) to the face is going to hurt no matter what your level is. Combat just needs to feel grittier. I've read justifications of the HP attrition model before, but the abstraction just doesn't appeal to me (it makes sense for some turn based combat RPGs, but not the combat in Skyrim or Oblivion).