Fine, so I haven't really played that far into Arena or Daggerfell, but I stand by my assesment that they just make a character look really stupid (in the case of the above screenies, really, really, really, really stupid)

Those are cloaks.

To be fair, cloaks and capes would make sense in Skyrim if you wanted to keep warm. I know DA:O has nothing to do with oblivion, but picture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2Ya1p_BALs running around without those cloaks in such an icy and mountainous environment.

It all depends on how they're modeled.

Not trying to start an argument, but as somebody who's modeled cloaks before I can tell you that not all of them look stupid... (now I'm wishing I didn't re-do my system). Either way, Ezio and Altair both wear cloaks without looking stupid. Capes... are hard to pull off because they serve very little purpose and look goofy most of the time. Cloaks are an entirely different story.

A cloak is a cape.

http://www.internationalrivers.org/files/images/Crusader.jpg
http://www.freewebs.com/chetts/BobaFett2.jpg

Thats a little harsh is it not? Morrowhine?
Buggerfell I can understand, it is an old game, it may have some bugs and glitches and such stuff.
Oblivicrap is also another thing I can understand, it isnt the best game they have done...
But Morrowhine?

Anyway, why not let them build it up from scratch and THEN check the other games for stuff to add from there? That way it wont be Mobliviofell with something new, but instead something new with good experiences from the other games!

I want them to make their own game from the ground up. The way they always do with the Elder Scrolls series.

There is no reason to change things that are working fine, excluding "natural" improvements because of better engine etc. They changed a good concept from Morrowind, e.g. message appearing after the player killed an important NPC into a crappy "essential" NPCs system and looked how that turned out.

There are plenty of bad things that could be changed or improved, so I don't want Bethesda to ruin good game aspects and to introduce new bugs when it can be avoided. They should focus on fixing game's faults. Examples include:

1. Both Morrowind and Oblivion had good graphics, but BAD animations. Compare Far Cry (2004) to Oblivion (2006). When it comes to animations, Oblivion fails badly. I won't mention games like Assassin's Creed, because then Oblivion's animations look like the work of amateurs. Also, animation variety is poor. You would expect blacksmiths to actually forge weapons and fisherman to actually go fishing. Such things really improve immersion.

2. Both MW's and OB's cities were undersized and underpopulated. Look at cities in Assassin's Creed 1 or 2. That's how cities should look like in modern games.

3. MW's and OB's spells felt and looked weak, no matter what they actually did. I'm not asking for massive meteor storms or other such things, but there is absolutely no sense of power in high-level spells. "Flare" hardly differs from "Fire Storm".

4. AI was bad in both games, too. It's ridiculous that enemies can't react properly to such simple actions as firing arrows while standing on a giant rock. They should jump if they can, hide behind obstacles if they can't reach you and flee if they feel badly outmatched. Also, spellcasters often didn't really know what to do with their spells. They should combine them in order to release their fullest potential, e.g. they should cast Weakness to Fire before casting Fireball. Moreover, NPCs should utilise "common" knowledge - why the hell they try to harm a Nord with frost spells?

While this may be true, you could talk to every citizen of those cities in Morrowind and Oblivion. All of them were unique. AC's cities feel hollow and empty, filled with nothing but clones.

They only really became unique(to a limited degree) in Oblivion, excluding guards and beggars. In Morrowind, they were just filler that usually repeated the same things as anyone else. The same goes for Arena and Daggerfall. :shrug: They could do it again and make a city extremely large using Daggerfall's random generation, but then the towns just become too repetitive, in my opinion.

Thats a matter of Opinion I think characters look cool with capes. Plus there were a lot of stupid looking clothes in Morrowind and Oblivion, that I wouldn't wear, but that doesn't mean I don't want them. They add variety and depth.

I miss cloaks, as well.

No no no. They just take the last game, remove ton of stuff from it, and make the next one smaller and easier. Never build one from the ground up. Heh, here I am, hoping they would actually gather every good thing and unfinished idea they've had over the years and improve on them. Stupid old me.

The point is to make cities feel alive. You can't do that if there are less than 100 NPCs in most cities.

I have nothing against "generic" NPCs as long as they have names, schedules and some information to provide (it can be done by race and class). Not everyone needs to give a quest.

Quest? No. Unique dialogue? Why get rid of it? I thought it was nice.

The last time Bethesda made an area a convincingly real size, it was really, really boring.

In fallout 3, some NPC's simply say a quick line when you try to talk to them, without the conversation system kicking in, that would be a great way to fill a town with NPC's without having to give them all conversation options.

You misunderstood me. Unique NPCs should stay - if anything, they should be more fleshed out. I'm just saying that in order to create appropriate atmosphere cities need to be large and populated. Instead of average ~100 NPCs per big city it should be sth like ~500 NPCs. Those NPCs would have names, homes, schedules and generic topics, but most of them wouldn't have much unique dialogue.

Come on, it's ridiculous to see Imperial City being so small and underpopulated or Vivec being lifeless. We need filled inns and overcrowded slums, performing bards, muggers in shady alleyways, adventurers, pickpockets, priests. Cities need to be bustling with activity. It's not that PC needs to establish long-lasting relationships with every NPC or be friends with everyone. The world needs to be more crowded, more busy.

I'm not asking for 1:1 ratios, but things are definitely too quiet and too small right now.

Again, TIE does this...

In TES2 cities felt like real cities.
-I never visited every house
-I made business in some of the shops and used some of the services. There were several choices but I never had to go to each of them.
-There were hundreds of people. I never spoke to them all.
-I didn't visit each and every city.

So, just like in real life. Unlike TES3 and 4, which had more game- than life-like approach: you gotta see all and do all. "All" is scaled down so it's possible.
I want TES5 to feel less a game, more like another life in anpother world. Dragon Age, Witcher, Mass Effect, Gothic, they are nothing like TES series. They are enjoyable even if they feel like games.

That would be great!

Also id like to add spell failure from morrowind. I kinda liked that. It made you feel you were becoming
more powerful as your powerful spells fail less often In oblivion the spells you bought were static,
they were the same no matter how much you improved you magic skills, which was a bit boring imo.
Even better would be that both damage and chance of success would improve with your skills.

There are some good points in here, however I definitely agree with being able to ask anyone about any topic of conversation that I know about in game i.e. hear about a quest, piece of lore, location, character..why can't I ask about it to someone I meet..they don't have to know after all..

Exactly. It was like that in Morrowind and it worked fine. Well, maybe it should be more based on disposition/race/class (this should generate enough content without overextending the devs), but the foundation is there.

Stealth from Fallout 3
Combat mechanics from Morrowind
Combat animations from Oblivion
Leveling system from Daggerfall
Character creation from Daggerfall
Theft from Morrowind
Open gameworld/cities from Morrowind / Fallout 3
Horses from Oblivion (tweaked for improvements)
Spell and alchemy failure from Morrowind (tweaked to make it less severe)
Magicka regeneration from Oblivion
Skill options from Daggerfall
Graphics from Fallout 3

No thanks on the bolded part. Combat was a part Oblivion improved on imo.

Bethesda is bad at two things, combat and ladders. I hear that they are trying very hard to improve their ladders.

They should improve the graphics not take them from a previous game.

I don't think that's true.

Just because a game isn't the scope of Daggerfall doesn't mean that the content needs to be trimmed down so that it's viable to experience everything in one playthrough. I believe the opposite, actually.

If a game is as huge as Daggerfall, a lot of empty space is understandable. But, if a gameworld is small enough that a travel from one end to the other takes 1 and a half to 2 hours, tops, then there's no excuse not to cram as much stuff to do in there as possible.

First of all, it goes without saying that more people are going to be manually mapping out the wilderness if it's smaller and they know that there's unique, hand-placed stuff to be discovered.

Second of all, even if you took all the places to visit in Daggerfall, (albeit randomly generated and repetitive) and crammed them together so that they were all touching, there'd still be too much stuff to cram into Morrowind's gameworld, with expansions, or even Oblivion's.