The TES series is one of the older ones I've played, spanning back to me being 8 and playing the arena on 8 floppies on a computer that now can't even match a graphing calculator for power. As open world games go, TES is a standout. I played arena and daggerfall for months, despite never finishing either of them. For the arena, I was too young to grasp all the intricacies like my older brother or dad and win. For daggerfall, navigating dungeons was nigh impossible. Morrowind saw vast improvements to the first two, barring spin-offs. Visuals, sound, landscape and dungeon design. Quests and NPC's that weren't just randomized. The one thing I didn't fall in love with was the combat. Back in arena and daggerfall, this was about what gameplay could amount to. In fact it was impressive at the time. Morrowind's engine got a leap because now things like strafing and leaping around your enemy like a psychotic monkey were possible. As well as tatics, leading people into chokepoints, knocking them off walls, etc. It was an improvement, though the state of games at the time still made the system feel slightly antique when you were swinging away and not hitting anything.

Then comes Oblivion. Certainly not the worst game combat wise I've played, but it's nowhere near the top. A marginal improvement. The choice to block, and weapons always hitting (though doing pitiful amounts of damage at times). Later on, you get enemies who might as well be brick walls, and that daedric sword you are carrying might as well be a stick. It breaks you out of the experience when you slap a hammer across someones dome and they treat it like you gave them a reassuring hug. Lots of things, but put Oblivion's combat to comparison with other games (particularly two, recent titles.) and it's bad. For what is essentially a core part of the game, it needs a rework. Action style sword and board combat is hard to do well, illustrated by the lack of shining examples. I finished Demon Soul's (PS3) a while ago, and that game immersed me better then any game I've played in a long time. This game had almost nil for NPC interaction, only one quest (Save the world!) and could be controller bustingly frustrating (Firelurker, sword and sheld melee character). The combat though, caught me. Some fights being the adrenaline rush I don't often get anymore. It quickly taught you to approach every monster like it could murder you in a single hit (lot of them could). In the beginning even a few good whacks from a zombie could end you. But by the same token, a few good whacks from you could usually end them. A single well-placed backstab or riposte manuever would be enough to kill or brutally injure everything but the boss monsters. The way it was set up, you would approach every fight differently, use whatever advantage was available to you. Some people used magic, some bows to keep distance. Some went the defensive route with good shields to whether attacks and strike when an opening appeared. Some just got the biggest longest weapon they could and ended fights with one well placed swing. It didn't have quite as many options as TES series (sneaking around wasn't usually worthwhile) but every single one was polished to a shine and based on timing and skill. If you were truly good, the type of monster versus your level didn't matter as much, because he might not even get a hit in. Being able to dodge, parry or block in a split second reaction made you feel like you were something else when you came out on top.

I play this game and I look back to Oblvion and feel like it's fencing versus hitting a tree with a stick. Granted, TES has a huge open world, with much more to do then simply beat the crap out of some demons. But combat is still a core part of gameplay. You have to do it, it can't be run around or avoided. I'm not saying one should copy demon soul's or any other game. I say "have to" because that's what it feels like when there is a fight. It is not fun. Nowhere close. There's a reason I only played a thief and that's because most fights could be stopped before I had to get into a bludgeon fest. A more reactionary/skill based system feels more real then a contest to see who has more hitpoints. The style of combat is still very much rooted in it's Arena ancestor. Drag or clicking your mouse to bludgeon the enemy to death. It's antique, and it's time to bring it up to the standards of today. Building an epic world with a good story is difficult enough, but if you could pull off doing that and having a combat and gameplay system that can stand next to these qualities, you'd have a game that blows anything anyone has made in a long time out of the water. A more reactionary/skill based system feels more real then a contest to see who has more hitpoints.

What that guy said.

I do not know about Daggerfall or Arena as I did not play those games, but I can say that both Morrowind and Oblivion failed to make the combat very interresting. Morrowind's comabt had the good idea. You as a player pointed at something and your character carried it out to the best of his or her abilities. Like this, you were left to deal with strategy and the "bigger plan" of the battle, while to actual performance was left to your character, which I think is a good way to go for an RPG. Unfortunately, the graphical and execution and the animations were not all that good and not even for the time of its release, I guess.
Oblivion made the combat look a bit better (for a while) but for a terrible price. Sure it is more "accessible for the larger audience" as dumbing down is often called, but it has also lost its most important feature and that is a concentration on character skills. In attempt to make the skills have at least some meaning, the damage caused by a weapon became so scaled taht at later levels a fight with a common enemy could literally take minutes. Many people say that Morrowind's combat was frustrating because seeing one's sword pass through the body of enemy, who is standing just in front of you is unbearable. I say that striking at a bear with a claymore for several minutes, hitting each time and yet doing almost no damage at all is equally frustrating.

The next TES game should definitely NOT get inspired by any more action games in their execution of combat. They definitely should go back to truer RPG mechanics. To kill a lesser enemy, one or two strikes should suffice, for higher end enemies or even bosses, the number should grow, but not too much. Your skill should influence how often you hit and it can have an impact on the damage done, IF it does NOT mean that you will have to hit a rat 10 times with a claymore to kill it. What can be taken form action games and where Morrowind (and Oblivion as well) lacked gratly is the visual representation of combat. With growind skills it would be nice if your strikes could be getting more and more rafined and look better and better. Depending on CHARACTER skills and enemy condidtion, the character should be able to perform special attacks or finishing moves to spice the combat up (and yes, I mean that those special attacks should be triggered by the character (or better to say by some background scripts) and NOT the player).

If Beth manages something like this, I would be very happy, but also very surprised, because leaving the current trend of turning TES into action game genre would be quite hard for the devs. But one can hope, no?

I didn't find MW or Oblivion combat very interseting
Can't say I cared, wasn't the focus of the game for me
Would I like better combat in TES V? Yes
Will it make or break the game for me? No

I have mixed views on combat in TES.
I'll admit the first Elder Scrolls game I played was Oblivion, but I did move back a step when I was able to get my hands of a clean Morrowind GotY, so I played that too, hoping to understand the TES fandom which had only be Oblivion in my eyes at first.
With all honesty, both games, in terms of combat, have their good and bad side. What I hated about Morrowind's combat is I hate roll-to-hit in a real time game. That is more better for turn basied games, such as Baldur's Gate. However, I really liked the calutations within the combat it's self. Alternatively, I liked Oblivions combat for it's real-time based, but I felt that, after playing Morrowind, that Oblivion's combat was too basic.

Oblivions combat wasn't the problem. The combat was fine, it was the leveling system. Everything had too many hit points and didn't do enough damage

For a flawless combat system, look at mount and blade. It takes into account weight, momentum (you cant just idly stand in front of someone clicking attack, you have to move as if you were using the weapon), armor material (a light sword will do nothing against chainmail, whereas a blunt weapon will still deliver blunt force and a devistating polearm hit will still hit it) as well as other factors.

It's the only game I've ever played that's got combat right. Full stop

I agree with this, the long combat could get annoying at times. Same with Fallout 3 when you fight albino radscorpions and other level 20+ enemies. I hope TES5 won't have this issue.

But other than that, I think the Oblivion combat was fine.

combat movement was fine in Oblivion, kinda right back to Daggerfall.

but yeah they really need to completely trash this level-scaling idea they got, and maybe have a look at Mount and Blade.

Demon's Souls does have very good combat. I've been playing the game since it was released and I'd be willing to bet that it has one of, if not the best combat system I've seen in an RPG/ARPG. However, I don't think it would work well with a first-person style game as it is. Also, its combat system relies almost entirely upon player skill, something the more RPG side of the TES fan-base wouldn't be too happy about I think. Bethesda could definitely take some pointers from it though, like 'how to make enemies challenging without turning them into bulletsword sponges.'

I liked how on Oblivion I could block myself, and yield when I accidentally hit someone who got in my way.

On the one hand, I can see how player shouldn't shouldn't matter as much as character skill, but on the other hand, the systems used for morrowind or oblivion were quite tedious.

The compromise I propose is have the character's skill with the weapon affect the accuracy, speed, and (partially) damage of the attack, but have more lethal and realistic combat with locational damage. If you had a low Long Blade and you aimed to swipe at someone's neck with a sword:

your character would take a second to actually attack. He would sort of broadcast the swing he's about to make during the second from click to attack, and have the swing slightly slower. If the AI was better, your opponent could more easily step out of the way or block. As the character's skill gets better, the swing would come sooner after your click and it would swing faster. Think a real life fist fight; a UFC fighter's quick and sudden but still powerful hook, as opposed to a drunken guy's huge windup for his haymaker.

if your opponent didn't manage to dodge or block, and the swing landed, it might not actually hit his neck, where you aimed. It might hit his arm or his chest. The higher the character's skill, the more likely it is that you'll hit exactly what you were aiming for, and the more the possible error distance would decrease.

if you hit your opponent in the arm, with a low skill, there is a fair chance that the arm would become useless, and a fair chance that the arm's speed of swinging a sword or raising a shield will decrease. The higher the character's skill, the more likely the arm will become useless, or the more severely the arm's functionality decreases.
if you hit your opponent in the chest, with a low skill, there is a fair chance of your opponent dying, and a fair chance of his fatigue, speed, strength, and agility will decrease. The higher the character skill, the more likely it is that the opponent will die, or the more severely his fatigue, strength, speed, and agility will decrease.
if you hot your opponent in the neck, he will die.
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Obviously these different variables' values would change with different weapon types. A dagger swing would be faster and more accurate, but the chance of crippling or killing an opponent with a body, arm, or leg hit would be drastically reduced and injuries would be less severe. Inversely, a warhammer swing would be slower and less accurate, but would have a drastically improved chance of crippling or killing an opponent with a body, arm, or leg hit, and injuries would be more severe..

Armor would reduce the chances of being crippled or killing, and reduce the severity of injuries.
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In my opinion, a fairly decent way to compromise with player skill/fun and character skill/rpg elements.

To me it's not that combat system in OB was flawed. It's leveling of enemies that was flawed. When my character was really strong (level 50) i needed to waste over 100 arrows to kill bloody ogre. So stealth hits make no real difference there. I mean, it's ok then you have stronger enemies in later levels of your characters, but those enemies shouldn't be that durable! Fighting an ogre, which isn't really vital for any quest, for half hour isn't fun.