Unless you make it so that your skills affect not damage, but your ability to wield the weapon. Like how fast you swing, how quickly you recover from swinging, how close to your crosshair the sword hits, how likely you are to disarm or be disarmed, the chance of fumbling, etc.

I'd like to see more robust combat. Like weapon impacts which do not go thru your opponent but get stuck in them. More interaction with the enviroment, like creeping around obsticles and doing that looking around corners for that thief in you. It would be nice if you character can show battle wounds like scars and maybe limbs being cut off. Mind you, you could get the limbs repaired at the local temple, but would cost a lot of gold.

Voted yes, tough I'm not expecting much more than it was in Oblivion, but would be a pleasant surprise if they added a possibility to behead and dismember limbs from opponents.
Could be a percentage when you have enough strength and skill in preferred weapon, or when performing a power attack

Gore is not necessarily realistic. I've seen real gore before and it's overdone in many games. Being that Oblivion is an armor based game, that would hold in a lot of gore from most NPC's. I would just vote for increased blood. Gore is more than likely a gimmick towards a game. If TES went this long with less of it, keep it that way. If you want some gore, play Fallout. If you call fallout realistic in gore, lol.

I'd like there to be visual damage when in combat, but I'll cry if it's like Fallout 3 and you can make someone explode by punching them in the arm.

blood. more blood.

A little realism, like seeing your avatar or your opponent being effected by attacks is nice.... over the top gore is not attractive and takes time away from making other stuff look real/good.

Yes to bloody epic fights.
No to "realistic".

Not sure how one gauges "realistic" since (i) we've never experienced melee combat with magic and (ii) fighting with swords and shields is a largely lost art. What I do know is that "realistic" would pretty much mop the floor with "balanced". We know for a fact that the best knights of their day were pretty mobile, even in plate. We also know that a guy in decent metal armor was nothing less than a tank on the medieval battlefield. Translate that into Elder Scrolls world and even lowly Iron armor will steamroll through a bandit cave where they're wearing leather.

Additionally, when it comes melee weapons, there's practically no such thing as a glancing blow unless you're in plate armor. If you get hit with an axe, chances are you've permanently messed up a limb if you haven't put your foot all the way into the grave.

So yeah... I want my fights bloody, but I don't want them "realistic"

Would be cool to see more bloody fights but i'm not looking for a gore fest that is on par with Fallout 3.

Then be a mage. I mean, it's one thing if you're a fan of Zelda and only like using swords against spiders or tiny plants or w/e, but most of your targets in this game are people. How you can be okay with simulating the murder as long as there aren't any of the real life effects seems odd to me.

I wouldn't mind it, but again, it has to be realistic if there are swords and bows involve. It can't be like Fallout 3 where every time someone dies they jettison their limbs.

second that

Actually I was hoping that mage spells would have similar visuals to Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, whereby if you killed the opponent with fire the body was all charred up.

Blood and gore I could live without, for the most part. Realism would be nice though. Stabbing someone in the guts should leave little blood around, but they should drop down screaming in pain for the next few minutes until they finally fall unconscious and (likely) die. A cut to a leg should leave a bit of blood around, but for the most part simply leave the person hit unable to use that leg until it healed over (either magically, or after a few weeks in bed). Amputations don't happen all that often on a battlefield, those should be mostly left to the healer tents and houses, to fight infections and rot and remove permanently mangled limbs.. Of course, this all requires that healing magic (and the help of the gods) is neither cheap nor easily available for everyone.

How could it seem odd to you that someone can like fantasy combat while not wanting to see blood and gore? That's like saying "why would you play the Sims and simulate a family and not want to see graphic sixual activity?"

I've been silently lurking this thread from my initial post, reading the posts lusting for detatched limbs and blood and gore, and I think back to the six thread and I think, "this must be what the people that vehemently oppose sixual themes being included in the game feel like when they seem all grossed out at the notion of even non-graphic sixual themes."

For me, graphic violence is pretty much at the top of the advlt only spectrum. Fantasy fighting is one thing, but for me violently dismembering people with blood splashing all over is just about as disturbingly graphic as a game can get. Yes, I think graphic gore is worse than graphic six, and I don't understand how nudity is considered far worse to so many people. You can tear someone to shreds limb from limb and behead them, yet show a little skin and it's the end of the world?

That said, I accept that my opinion is a minority. I do not mind giving people the option of blood and gore though, but I simply have never played Fallout 3, largely due to the gore. If I do ever play it, I will install mods to reduce or eliminate the gore. This is a fantasy game. It's not the real world. I can fight with weapons and it's just fun. It doesn't have to splash bloods/limbs/organs all over for me. You brought up Zelda, but you do fight humanoid creatures in Zelda as well. That game series is highly successful without blood as well. In fact there are many dozens of great games that don't need gore to be fun and successful games.

If people want it as an *option* fine, but I do not want to have to see it. In fact, if it's as graphic as Fallout 3 I will not purchase the game until mods are available to remove the gore, if it is not an option.

Lastly, self defense isn't murder. I have zero murders on my Oblivion and Morrowind files, and I didn't touch the Dark Brotherhood quests in Oblivion.

How does this make it more immersive though. Unless they somehow make the animations of the game so good that every hit is actually deflected by a sword parry or something until your epic bloody killing blow then having this level of "realism" actually is less RPGish. Once you get good at the game no matter what they do to make it harder like your swings being slower or less accurate or whatever you will be head chopping everyone with a skill of 5 in blades. Kind of like how people easily unlock very hard locks with 5 skill in security in oblivion.