Oh where to begin... Isn't it early to make a Christmas List?
1. Would Absolutely Love the ability to create dialogue in the CS with matching Lip-Sync. We lost that in the GECK with Fo3/FNV, but hopefully now that we are back in TES territory, we will get some love on lip sync. Can live with the old one as long as it works on Skyrim mods.
2. Hoping for preservation of the file formats and structure - unless that structure impeeds the new engine! There is a big knowledge-base in modder-land around that format, and it would be great to have that going into Skyrim.
3. The Object Palette is (IMHO) one of the most powerful world building tools I've seen, and would very much like to see it's return in Skyrim. However one little change - offer us an ability to Place an object with the palette by something Other than CTRL+ALT. This is utterly selfish, as I have to use a custom keyboard due to a hand condition - and I can't map that sequence such that I can hit it with a http://www.datahand.com/. If we could "Assign" the palette keys, that would give flexibility to all.
But I don't expect this one, just a random Christmas Wish.
4. Please make the new LOD system intuitive, so we modders can figure it out.
It took a very long time for us to figure out the Fo3/FNV LOD system, and exact knowledge of how to make Wasteland LOD without generating it All again is known only by a few. Its very hard to be honest, and most of our mods are missing LOD as a result. With such a new emphasis on LOD in the new engine, I am hungry to get my greedy paws on it - but I hope I can figure it out.
5. Make "Auto-Save" a default option with 15 minutes (or so), which will save countless modders from losing work. The experts can turn it off easily-enough, but the average modder doesn't even know how and I have seen many tragic threads of lost work. Auto-save for the masses!
6. I don't think we the modders should have 100% total, complete freedom with NPC animations. Many will hate me for this, but I have legal fears about future games and our ability to mod if someone takes Animated Prostitution + Photo-realistic Facial graphics + Any sound byte she (or any actress) has used in six scenes from any movie they have ever made + You Tube = Major Lawsuit. That poor actress would end up on You Tube in situations that are so bad it would seriously hurt them and might even harm Bethesda . Again this is my own personal opinion on the matter, but the awesome level of flexability we get from the CS could be turned against us if the wrong people use it. With Oblivion and Fallouts the graphics were still not good-enough for a You Tube bomb to work - but these latest screenshots worry me. I would rather Bethesda "limit" NPC animation modding in some way to prevent the worst of these kinds of mods (IMHO).
Blast away, that's my wish list.
Miax