1. You will need a compass, either it′s always there or if you have to buy it.

2. No to quest arrow, it makes it so simple. I liked how it was on morrowind, "go to X, to get there travel to the town of Z and from there SW until you reach Y and from there travel W"

3. Again, like morrowind, you need too use a travel service, maybe be able to travel anywere on the main roads by marking where you want to go of.

4. depends on how you travel, by stagecoach sure but if you fly siltsriders no ambush

5. in a way, yes. If you have been out running for ten hours without rest or food your regeneration slows down say 20% and so on but never below 20% and never cause you to collapse, and if you are in the wild resting and have food and water with you you′ll use it when resting, and if you are well-rested you are more alert.

6. yes

7. no, unless you are in a town like in morrowind and only waiting.

8. no regeneration it should decrease.

9. no not like in morrowind, please.

10. this would be interesting, at least to be able to toggle it on/off, and maybe have so that weapons can be destroyed permanently, not all but for instance you attack a guard with a wooden staff and he chops it off while you are blocking.

11. all don′t have to be fatal but they should cause you much trouble and some should be fatal

12. yes, but only in large quantities if you carry one lockpick it should not matter but if you are carrying 50 lockpicks it should start to weight.

Like the idea of compass/map, etc. becoming in-game items (the compass was in-game in Thief, the map kinda in-game in Far Cry 2, and it was nice in both cases). Minimal HUD, too, which is nice for immersion.

For the magic quest marker, in hardcoe, it should be a literal magic quest arrow; that is, you could get a blessing from a priest of Talos, e.g., that would apply the magic compass to a specific quest, for a day or so. It shouldn't be a map marker, though, just a grail-like beacon in the distance in your mind's eye.

Prefer ambushes with fast travel and resting -- but as part of normal play, not hardcoe mode.

Like a food/drink/rest mechanism, but not too over the top. Some sort of tax on character time to encourage players to use it strategically and experience some of the concerns that a real adventurer would deal with (i.e., scraping together enough money to pay next month's rent -- don't laugh, it was a decent catalyst for Garrett's adventures, after all). Also forces characters to use some of their inventory space for packing and storing food -- getting a backpack full ancient gold does you no good if you starve on your way back to town.

As for die rolls, I think it should really cover (in melee) your chance to hit the weak points in armor and on the body, rather than affecting damage directly and consistently, or causing you to miss Morrowind style. It could also affect blocking or counterattacks or successfully pulling off maneuvers more complicated than "hit thing with sharp thing". Regardless, it's not realistic to have a completely separate system for a hypothetical hardcoe mode, so this preference applies to normal mode too.

Injury System: Like spell effects or disease; most wounds from falling or battle should inflict an "injury" of some sort, which would usually involve some health and stat penalties, maybe some special conditions like nausea or spell failure, etc. Injuries would make it harder and harder to fight and avoid further injury, until eventually you're incapacitated, at which point you're captured, slain, or left for dead. Health would still exist as a number, but would be less about wounds and more a measure of general condition (thus, very affected by food, water, rest, and disease as well as injury and blood loss).

Disease should not only be harsher and potentially fatal if untreated, it should not be as easily curable -- Disease should have a magnitude (call it "virulence"), and a Cure Disease effect of that magnitude or greater should be required to treat it. While disease should lower health, high health should contribute to resisting disease in the first place.

Agree with object weight -- however, the game economics should be centered around more traditionally adventury forms of loot -- ancient artifacts and writings, massive jewels, caches of coins, trophies, magical items, and so on. Note: All things that are fairly small, individually. You shouldn't even be tempted to bother with the hassle of strolling into town and pawning a hundred sets of dented up iron armor. In fact, no one in town should be willing to buy a hundred sets of armor from you. Craftsmen should sell the product of their labor, not resell the finds of adventurers. Finding armor and weapons should mainly be about either upgrading and keeping nice equipment, or maintaining a more... cinematic playstyle that involves abusing your weapons and then grabbing more weapons off the ground and wrecking them too. Armor should mainly be valuable for upgrade or replacement parts.

If the game takes place in Skyrim, one other hardcoe feature to consider: heat management. Once you leave warm areas, your body temp would start dropping. Argonians are susceptible, Khajit are resistant (for reasons that are hopefully obvious), as are Nords. Clothing/leather is good for slowing heat loss, metal is as useless as walking around naked, fur is great. You find or build fires to help recover your heat, and mages can use very subtle, controlled pyrokinesis to keep themselves warm (or they can blast their enemy to cinders and warm their hands over the embers). General area temperature would vary with place, time, and weather conditions, but cold and heat effects (including fire and frost magic) could provide short-range boosts or penalties. Water in particular would be promote hypothermia. Hypothermia would sap health, but would also affect penalize agility as you start to shiver uncontrollably.

Aye, I still want a compass but no quest arrow

Morrowind had a compass built into the mini-map, which was fine with me. Anything more than that (markers, etc.) is "handholding". Having a compass as an in-game purchasable item might be better, if you don't want to rely on reading the positions of the sun or stars to guage your general direction. That way, a struggling "survivalist" character can go without one, while a "fully equipped" traveller of better financial means would buy one as soon as possible.

My thoughts on the features in the list:

hardcoe mode - No. One set of core mechanics, please.
No quest compass/no quest arrow - You should be able to buy a compass. There should be some sort of quest arrow, but it should be an approximation of the correct direction, nothing more, with the accuracy of that approximation perhaps being tied to some character skill/attribute.
No fast travel - I would not like to see fast travel removed entirely, but I also would not like to see a repeat of Oblivion's system. I'd much prefer to see something more like Morrowind's system, where you pay for fast travel services, and they are realistically limited.
Fast travel, with chance to be ambushed - As long as it's not common, sure.
Survival needs (drink, eat, sleep) - Yes, but only so long as it is done right. I should not drop dead after one day without food.
Rest/sleep, chance of getting attacked/robbed - Yes.
Rest/sleep, doesn't heal magicka/health - Magicka should be healed. Health should improve with sleep, but some injuries should be too severe to be helped by a little sleep. Indeed, some injuries should be bad enough that going to sleep rather than, say, getting help would be the LAST thing you'd want to do.
No fatigue regeneration while running - Yes.
Dice roll/hit chance, based on skills - Not directly. Rather, I'd like a combat system where skills actually improved the way your character fought, not just the damage dealt. For instance, a low level character might use clumsy slashes which are easily knocked aside, and this would not come in the form of a low hit chance or anything like that, but this actually being shown on screen. I know this wouldn't be easy to program, of course.
Locational damage/injuries - Yes. I touched on the injuries part of this in my response to rest/sleep restoring health. It should be possible to recieve an injury so severe that your character WILL die if he does not get help fast. I'd like to see a move away from the simple numeric 'health' system to a more realistic one.
Disease can become fatal - Yes, definitely. Not every disease though, obviously.
All items have weight - Yes, but we'd need a bank.
Other hardcoe features - Something I'd like to see is a far more restrictive system governing where and when you can and can not save your game. Quicksaving should be removed entirely. This would have to be done very carefully, but would significantly improve the game if done right. When I take a risk with my character, I should actually be taking a risk.
No hardcoe mode for me - No hardcoe mode. My above thoughts were regarding such features as base mechanics.

If there is a hardcoe mode (assuming the game is ever made), I'd like to see the following.

- No quest compass (IMO this shouldn't be in at all, but that's a different story). Actually, no compass at all. Maybe a purchasable compass that you keep in your inventory.
- No quest arrow. At all. Ever. This is my biggest peeve.
- Survival needs (the need to drink, eat etc).
- No fast travel. Transportation should be offered (as in Morrowind) but at a price (as in Morrowind).
- Locational damage and injuries. MGS 3 style would be nice.
- No fatigue regeneration when running. It should decrease when you run. After all, running IRL makes you tired.
- All items have weight, I love this idea.
- I'd like to get attacked in my sleep if I sleep in dangerous areas.
- Diseases becoming fatal.

Basically I'd like it to be similar to real life.

I'm going to piggy-back off of this while adding a few alterations here and there.

1.) No Quest Compass and 2.) No Quest Arrow

I agree with Hellmouth on these two. Compasses are acceptable and there is a needed sense of direction. However, why not have the compass and map become real 3D objects? Did any of you play Farcry 2? I'm thinking that the map can be brought out along with a compass similar to that, except without the whole gps and self-tracking mechanic. Instead, guides and scouts could identify and write down landmarks and locations on a map (you could buy a few) and it would be up to the character to orient themselves accordingly in order to reach a location. It would seem to be a good mix between both TES III and IV's map system, with a foundational system based on Morrowind's, lined with elements from Oblivon's.

7.) Rest/Sleep - Doesn't heal any magicka or health

I also agree with Hellmouth here, given the exception of being seriously wounded (such as crippled, poisoned, or diseased). That would seem acceptable, and could be taken care of through a healer.

8.) No fatigue regeneration when running

Again, I'm with Hellmouth, except I believe that running and sprinting should be two separate mechanics (including or excluding a free-run type style similar, but not on par with AC2).

Anything I didn't mention I am in agreement with.

Yes, this.

Hasn't the TES series always been action/RPG

I don't believe so.

Was kind of a DnD style RPG with a hack n slash combat style.

I have not played arena but both daggerfall and morrowind is more of the hack n slash combat style.

I'd call DF and MW RPG/action games, whereas I'd consider OB to be ACTION/rpg.

Regarding Loreseeker's post - I see no problem with having sleep heal a small amount of health, and regen magicka at a "normal" rate, but nothing like FO3 where you catch a 1 hour nap and you're back from the verge of death to full health. After all, bed rest is a "standard" part of the healing process. More serious injuries should require either a combination of medical treatment and time, or else a healing spell that's adequate to handle the degree of injury. Stopping loss of blood should be relatively easy; broken bones and other "serious" damage should be more difficult.

Food, water, and rest should ALLOW natural healing or regeneration of magicka and fatigue. Without them, your character should gradually wear down through routine trivial scraqes, minor exertions, and trivial spell usage for routine tasks.

I'm with you.

"No fatigue regeneration when running." doesn't sound a least bit hardcoe to me. It just sounds smart. Doing it the other way is plain stupid.

Those are RPG elements, but not all of them are used in many RPGs in the past.

Judging from the OP TES2 was really a hardcoe game, but it was just a basic game of it's time, imo. I don't know, maybe it's the fact that back then you needed to work a bit when installing games, and making them work, now you just put a disc in and grab a controller, so you expect the same amout of challenge from the game itself. I get little or no enjoyment out of games that offer no challenge. Stop ruining my favourite game series Bethesda.

and one more thing, does anyone think it was lame that you where unable to kill main story NPC in oblivion, IMO it was better in morrowind cause if you went berserk in morrowind you could end up killing a main NPC and therefore be unable to finish the game. BTW IMO an action rpg like oblivion need′s 0 skills in-game to complete the game, sure you need to hit your foes a little bit more cause you don′t do much damage, but the fact is that there are not that many quests that is′int level based
(can only think of the daedric statues). and IMO a hack n slash rpg mean that you swing your sword on this huge barn size foe and misses cause basically his evade/block skill is much higher that your blade skill and that causes you to miss, like in morrowind, I mean, it′s impossible to beat the game on level one unlike oblivion