As for scouring for loot -> I found it really strange that caves inhabited by wild creatures had chests of loot stashed in dark corners all the time. How does that make any sense? It makes as much sense as finding gold coins and a spoon in a wolf or a rat.

At least in Morrowind the loot was in crates that were clustered together in bandit hide-outs. Loot placement should be sensible like that. As should monster placement - why are there spriggans and wolves three levels down in a cave? Just wandering around? These are out-doors creatures, not troglodytes!

Yearh I thought about that too. We need more varity in creatures so a dreugh lair would be dreughs only, but in different size and looks, and attacks so they wont get boring to fight.

STEALTH:
Stealth techniques: When performing a stealth technique, you will view your character in 3rd person, giving a contextual view of the surroundings. Stealth techniques have a fatal or non-fatal attack, corresponding to main and secondary click.

Pressed to a wall: press your back to a wall by approaching it in sneak mode. You may then slide along the wall and peek around corners without exposing yourself. If you are well hidden or it is dark, your target can walk right past you, or you can leap out and strike.

Hanging (Drains fatigue): Adept sneaks or acrobats can hang from a ledge or cliff edge away from a patrolling guard. When the guard passes by, you can reach up and pull him over the edge. Dropping a guard into a body of water won't kill him.

Hiding in a roof space (Drains fatigue): Master sneaks or acrobats can vault up into a roof space and hang there against the ceiling. Main click when your enemy is below you to drop down and inflict a fatal wound with your weapon. Secondary click to knock out your enemy with your body weight.

Stealth Kills: Landing an undetected hit on a target gives you a stealth kill animation that depends on the weapon and the angle of approach.

Actually announce if you are working on the game at all.
Maybe give the hardcoe fans some more influence into game aspects, realism, setting, or storyline, not much just maybe a poll with the majority answer being accepted.

Inventions, I like Da Vinci's flying machine in ASCII. Not flying, but maybe some horse & carriage.

Sounds sixual.

Something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwsKg6LwAuY would be awesome.

If there was a dead body outside of town, wild animals would clean it up. Nature is very effective at cleaning up. Opportunistic predators, the body's own decomposition, flies and insects, scavengers. You put a carcass out in the Masai Mara and it'll be picked clean before the sun is down. The post mortem decomposition process also plays a significant factor. Caveat: the body is out in the open. You stash it in a cave, somewhere out of reach, in an anaerobic environment, somewhere cold, and then yeah, things will take longer.

Yea, and loot/treasure has never been a real strong point for TES in general.

Overgeneralization is somewhat the problem in Oblivion, any general loot or any general monster can go in any cave or dungeon and so the atmosphere changes little between locations - regardless of where you go you're going to be fighting the same monsters and finding the same sort of loot. And that's not even to mention the completely inane way they leveled artifacts, giving identical but weaker versions of the artifact to lower level players...

I want more epic battles. Maybe in the next game their can be a war and you see that in one spot of the world is getting attacked by like for example, Shimmering isles and the longer you don't help the more your country loses territory until it is completely covered with the enemies. If your country is covered with the enemies doesn't necessarily means you lost the game but you find more and more enemie platoons searching for enemies to kill.

Yeah, but what about the named NPC's we want to keep alive? They'd be getting themselves randomly killed, like the merchants in FO3.

I don't like NPC's. In fact in most of my profiles, I have cleared out every NPC in the game other then the main characters. NOTE: I cleared them out in the cities.

I think TESV needs to take a page from Mass Effect (1 & 2) and expand alot on character development and interaction, and story.

Morrowind and Oblivion were great games, but I think Bethesda already knows what they need to draw from them. However (given Oblivion and Fallout 3), they seem to not have applied as much as they could've drawn from other great RPGs like ME1&2.

I figure TES could use some better running animations. MW just seemed too mechanical or suited better for a bicycle riding animation? Not to mention the argonians and khajiit looked like they're running on stilts, bobbing left to right in MW. OB looked like the character is simply going for a jog while going 50mph (maxed out characters) like they're not putting forth any effort going that fast. A running animation comparison I'd like to see put into TES would be the one from Gran Theft Auto 3, where Cloud (I thinks that's the playable character's name) actually looked like he was sprinting, actually lifting his arms and legs showing effort and exertion. Just not overdone like the old Ghouls 'n' Ghosts game from the 16-bit console era

Also what's up with the unisix walking animation in OB? Made it look like my character was halfway trying to strut his stuff like as if he was on a fashion runway. I think the walking animations were done better in MW even though the step and arm swinging would sometimes be disorganised/ out of sync. Of course, that's not to say that MW's walking animations didn't need improving as well.

Todd or Pete (can't remember which one). I think it was Pete. Anyway, he specifically mentioned that animations in general were going to be a focus in their next game.

I can't remember where/when they said that though. Does anybody have a link for that?

+100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

My take on Combat, Magic, and stealth fighting.






COMBAT

Blade: Maybe we could have the blade impale skin so the animal has a bleed out rate, for a mastery strike of course.
Like a forward master strike would be your character slamming their sword into the enemies body giving a 10% bleed out for 5 seconds.
(ie. Your forward master strike does 50 damage. So you would do 50 points of damage and then 15 points of bleed out damage.)

Blunt: I would like to see contusions and make it so it's like fallout 3 crippling.

Hand-to-hand: Bruises and bumps all the way, same as blunt.

Block: Nothing to add here.

STEALTH

Sneak: I believe shadows should play a big part in stealth, and I also had a problem with me standing in a different room of a house when everyone is asleep and all of a sudden a villager wakes up for no reason at all and confront. I say if they can't see you they can't confront you. Also maybe you could scale walls and slide across walls.

Marksman: We need vital points. And I am pretty sure, people who get shot by arrows don't immediately run ti their attackers or for that matter know where their attacker is. They should grab at their wound and be puzzled over who and where their attacker is.


MAGIC

Destruction: Last time I checked, getting hit by ball of fire burned your skin. I would like to see the effects of magic on the people you cast at the them. Fireball should leave burn marks all over the person, Frost ball should leave the person pale and shivering, lightning should also burn he person! Then when they heal themselves the effects should slowly go away until they aren't drastically disfigured!


And now for the intelligence part.
I think if the creature as a low intelligence it, will when shot by an arrow take the arrow out and be giving a bleeding effect. If you sneak the lower the intelligence of the person the harder it will be to find you and when shot by an arrow a longer time till it realizes who shot him. And sometimes will attack the person next to him. INTELLIGENCE DRAINING ARROW FTW!!!








EDIT: I would also like to be able to cut/smash down trees! I mean how cool would that be! Taking your ax out on a tree and doing it the old fashion way. Ooh and casting a fireball at a tree enough times burns a tree.

Many people are being negative nancies and saying that because Oblivion was less in-depth than Morrowind, TESV must also be less in-depth than Oblivion. What I've convinced myself is that the whole purpose of Oblivion was to attract the people that were too young for Morrowind and Daggerfall to TES series, and have Oblivion act as a tutorial for TESV which I sincerely hope will be as complex and in-depth as Morrowind.
Anyway, some of the following ideas are to elaborate and emphasize on points made earlier,some are ideas that I think most people in general want to see in TESV, and some other ideas are probably ideas that only I would find cool at all..

1. I would like to start out as a child and maybe get to choose my roots, like I could choose between having farmers for parents, or I could have the counts of cities as my parents, making me a prince/noble. That way the fighting and gameplay tutorials could be fighting with sticks with other children in a small town, or getting trained by professional trainers in a castle, respectively. And that leads up to my actual idea; I would like to have parents. Obviously if you're playing an old Mage, you would want your parents to have died of old age long before you reached that age. But if you're playing someone young, I think it would be kind of cool to have parents, and maybe have your parents murdered in the main quest or in a side quest or have them die of old age or random attacks. (few people would want their parents there the whole game while you're becoming a hero)

2. Children should be brought into TESV, maybe have them killable, but probably have them go unconcious or just be amazing at dodging and impossible to hit.

3. Many people would prefer to have combat as character-reliant as possible but I say it should become slightly more player-skill based. The Morrowind combat was just bizarre and annoying, while the oblivion combat was extremely repetitive. TESV should maybe have the offensive/defensive combos that someone mentioned earlier, but I have no idea how this would be implemented. Instead, I would like having to block and attack left and right. You would hold the block button or the attack button while you jerk the mouse or the joystick left or right. Character skill would determine how fast your attacks/defends and how much damage it does. Blocking should also block the full amount of damage but fatigue you; it seemed incredibly odd to me that I was dying because my arm was slightly jarred. Also, blocking shouldn't make the attacker become completely flustered. Again it seemed odd that every time my attack didn't get through as expected it was as if I took a warhammer to the chest.

4. There should be a slider in the options menu for character health/damage and enemy health/damage rather than just a difficulty slider. I would greatly prefer combat being more deadly, but I am sure there are others out there that are amused by trading blows with someone for five minutes.

5. There should definitely be locational damage. If I hit someone's arm with an axe there is a good chance that it would fall off, and even greater chance that it couldn't be used, even if it stayed attached, and little to no chance of being able to say "ouch, that one stung a bit and decreased my overall health quite a bit" and then being able to swing a sword with the arm that has an arrow sticking out of it and just took a full chop with an axe.

6. I would also like to see, if combat does become more realistic and based on not getting stabbed rather than being able to get stabbed hundreds of times per week, wounds and scabs and scars. This might take quite a bit of work for such a small detail and you would have to have the option of getting rid of your scars because I for one wouldn't want to walk around with a mace imprint on my face. If done correctly though, it could be a very nice touch.

7. Take out or reduce level scaling of NPCs and creatures. At level one I was takng a few hits to kill a rat, at level 45 I was having 30 minutes battles with rats where I barely got injured. It seemed the only purpose of levelled rats at that point was to dull your weapon and give you various diseases. I'm not saying take out rats but they should have the exact same stats no matter what level you are. It was nice in Morrowind when you would get completely outclassed in battle and have to run away to survive, then come back a few weeks later and be able to hold your own with that enemy. It wasn't nice in Oblivion when I was level 1, I took out a whole cave of ogres and then at level 45 I would come across ogres that outclass me.

8. Take out or reduce level scaling of items. Linked with #7, bandits should still have the leather armor they had at level 1 when the character is level 45. Unique items should be the same no matter what level you find them. In Oblivion if you found Umbra at level 1 it did like 15 damage for the rest of the game, but if you found it at level 45 it would do like 50 damage. That being said, I shouldn't have even been able to get Umbra until later levels, but thanks to level scaling..

9. I personally don't like fast travel because I think it ruins the game, but with my only options being running, an awkwardly steering horse, or fast travel, I felt the need to use it. There are some people who are in love with their fast-travel so don't get rid of it. Simply bring back divine intervention, mark/recall, boats, silt striders, and add in carriages and other means of a more immersive and limited fast-travel. Also make horses less weird to steer and faster. This way both parties can be happy.

10. There absolutely needs to be an option to remove the silly quest arrow. And have directions be more precise and using landmarks, regardless of if the option is turned off or on. I tried putting a bit of tape on my screen over the compass so I couldn't use it, but I soon discovered "somewhere in the mountains" isn't really sufficient information to find a certain cave.

11. Dual wielding would be an amazing feature. Rather than have a shield hand and a weapon hand, have right hand and left hand. This would allow for 2 weapons, or a weapon in 1 hand and then be able to punch with your other hand. There should also be a 'wrong hand' skill so attacks with your left (or right) are less powerful (and maybe slower/less precise and couldn't do those fancy paralyzing thrusts) than attacks with your right (or left). The skill would be like any other skill and could be chosen for your major/minor skill and would eventually be equal to your good hand.

12. More skills and weapons. Not only bring back the spear, unarmored, axe/blunt weapon, short/long blade, and medium armor skills, and not only bring back halberds/spears, throwing knives/stars, cross bows, and staves, but add even more than there was in Morrowind. I personally can't think of anything to add right now besides the Ambidextery skill that I was talking about above, but people enjoy having diversity.

13. Being able to join a temple would be great for roleplaying and immersion purposes. The temple to the God that you joined would have it's own questline and perks. When you get to a certain point in the questline you can start having conversations with your god as you pray (not 'latest rumors', but actual meaningful coversations). As you do more actions that your god likes you could get "slightly" better perks and as you do actions that your god is against, the perks would be revoked and eventually your god would refuse you and you would be kicked out of the religion until you can repent your sins (or repent your honourable actions if you are serving a daedra)

14. I'm not sure how many people would enjoy this, but making eating and sleeping necessities would be great in my opinion. For every day that you don't eat, your fatigue deteriorates, and when your fatigue is completely gone, it starts eating away at your health. Same idea for sleep although it might eat away at your health slower than not eating. Maybe you would be more vulnerable to catching diseases when you haven't slept in a few days. (this could be a toggle-able option fairly easily because it's a pretty isolated feature)

15. Waiting for 1 hour does not restore my health! Are you saying that if I get mugged and stabbed, I'll be back to my old self again if I just stay put for a while? NO. Morrowind's system was a lot better, where sleeping for an hour restores a certain amount of health, but not necessarily fully.

16. I think it would be neat if you could cast spells that cost more magicka than you have. After the spell drains your magicka, it would burn into your fatigue at a much faster rate, maybe 5-10 points of fatigue for every point of magicka it would have cost. After all your fatigue is lost it would drain your health at the same rate as fatigue. For example, if your charater has 50 health,50magicka,and 50fatigue and you cast a spell that costs 65 magicka, you would end up with 25health,0magicka,and 0 fatigue. This would add another dimension to spell casting where if you are not paying attention you could injure yourself, or if you are out of magicka and still have an enemy left, you can take the risk of trying that one last spell that could leave you too weak to run away if it fails, or it could save your life. There might have to be a minimum magic-skill level or intelligence/willpower level this would happen at, or else you might have a dumb warrior having more magicka than a Mage.

17. Money needs to be harder to get and matter more. In the previous TES games, you could easily make millions of gold, and then have really nothing to spend it on. Shopkeepers should not be buying 22 sets of ebony armor per day. They should be able to buy things from you based on what they need. They should buy the first set of ebony armor at a decent/fairly cheap price, the second at a dirt cheap price and refuse to buy the third through twenty-second sets for a few months. The shopkeepers should also have a certain amount of money and after that's depleted, have to slowly build up their capital over the next few days. The unlimited supply of money for shopkeepers in Oblivion seemed really strange to me. But if there is no level scaling, and rare items are actually rare, then you would only be finding like 7 sets of ebony armor throughout the whole game.

18. Actual hair for a beard, instead of just shading. Also being able to change your facial hair/hair styles in-game somehow. And as you age be forced to choose a hairstyle/color that makes sense for your age. Or your hair could passively and gradually fall out and turn gray

19. If you talk to people with your full set of armor on it should intimidate them and lower their disposition to you until you put on regular clothes. (basically the same as an unsheathed weapon). Also, wearing certain armors should lower disposition more than others, such as the DB armor over leather armor, or Daedric armor over iron armor.

20. Different designs of the same weapons or armor. Like have 1 set of Iron Armor be smooth and shiny, another set have some designs and runes engraved into it, and another set have guild or house crests engraved into it.

21. Be able to create your own armors and weapons with different designs and different weight/damage/armor stats than default items of the same material, depending on your armorer skill.

22. Bring back Levitation and make some other spells with useful effects besides damaging enemies

23. Be able to customize your height, muscle tone and body type during character customization. Don't let Altmer be the size of Wood Elves though.

24. Better character creation in general. Oblivion's was quite good, but Fallout3's was just awful, which makes me worry.

25. Let NPCs be able to say your name. During character creation, have a box for the spelling of your name, then another box for the literal pronounciation. Even if it would be too hard to make it sound natural in the dialogue, it could be used for people calling out to get your attention, instead of just 'pssst, hey!'

26. Bigger variety of enemies.

27. More adventurers and living legends that you can meet and befriend or even fight with/against. Have them actively doing their own set of quests so as you play for longer you hear about new things that they are doing. Have people talk about then in Latest Rumors or something and maybe compare you to them.

28. Have much more lore. Have people tell you stories of adventures that recently happened to them or someone else, and also stories of adventures that happened in the past. Basically just have more lore in general.

29. Have everyone named what they are (adventurer, Chorrol townsperson, Skingrad farmer, Bravil guard), and you would have to either talk to them or have someone point them out to you to learn their name. (and yes, guards should have actual names.

30. Have a goblin or two that don't try to kill you, but you can actually talk to and interact with. There should be an exception to every (semi-intelligent) race.

31. Have different races have different attitudes and personalities in general. Altmer would be condescending, Dunmer arrogant, etcetera.. Again, there should be exceptions to every race.

32. Have blatant racism. Certain NPCs taunt you and refuse to barter with you. However this would get old fast if I couldn't find a shopkeeper to sell to.

33. Have to actually remove arrows when you have time. Am I pulling out arrows and putting them in my bag while fighting? Have wounds by swords or arrows do a very slow bleeding damage, and you have to bandage them or use a spell to stop them from bleeding.

34. Right gauntlet/glove and left gauntlet/glove, or right bracer and left bracer if you don't want your hand covered, right pauldron, left pauldren, cuirass, greaves, right boot and left boot, or right shinpad and left shinpad, helm or helmet. Have all of this and more, stop grouping things together. And if I wanted to look asymmetrical, then that's my business, give me that option.

35. Wear clothes under your armor (at least for heavy armor), and be able to wear a robe or cloak or cape over your armor.

36. More clothing styles, such as cloaks and capes.

37. Camoflauge. Black armor is harder to see at night than white.

38. Have a chance to knock someone out instead of killing them if you hit someone in the head with your fist or a one handed mace or a staff. You could kill them after or or take their possessions and leave them, or revive them to kill them properly.

39. Bags and packs that you can only fit much into. Use this way as well as the weight system. Bags should hinder your movement and you could drop them if you wanted to chase something or if you were about to fight.

40. Be able to put a bedroll down in the wilderness and actually sleep.

41. Be able to create your own stationary camp with a fire, tent and bed, if you have enough hides to make a tent and enough wood and a splint for a fire.

And now I'll say the same generic comments as a hundred other people, but these points cannot be stressed enough.

Much better and more realistic AI.
Better graphics.
No more plastic ragdoll character models.
Be able to influence the natural environment.. Burn grass, freeze water, etcetera
Better physics.. No more walking into things and kicking them half a mile

This may require you to switch engines. Please do so if your current one is limiting you.

I only skimmed through your list but I very much agree with these two. Money in both Morrowind & Oblivion was way too easy to get, after a certain level it was near worthless, there was no reason to ever buy 3/4ths of the crap in the shopkeeper's inventory and yes, it was stupid that they constantly got their money back and would constantly buy more and more junk from you.

I also agree about having a pack system with a certain amount of space as opposed to weight (though weight should also play a role). This way you can't just boost your strength and somehow carry so much random crap that if it were all visible on your person you'd look like a walking trash-heap.

If TESV is in a country that borders another, I'd like to see special stores near the border. For example, if it takes place in Skyrim, then along Morrowind's border, have special shops (not a lot, only a couple) that contain Dunmer items, like matze, saltrice, kwama eggs, bonemold, chitin...

NOTE: Yes, I know what happens in the book, it was just an example

I agree. Border merchants would make sense.

uh yeah but even more realistic you hear all of these people talk about they came from there home land some should look different with clothing and there house should look different too, also some merchants should have different kind of items to sell since other people do use the stores such as travelers from different provinces not only you also border merchants could work as well

Completely agree.

forensic science would be nice as a skill, (especially in a forbidden multiplayer) eg. you come across a body somewhere (human or otherwise) and by examining it you can tell how long it's been there and by what means it died, you can then use your tracking skill in order to figure out what killed it and in which direction it left.

back story, you should be able to (at character creation) choose your back story from a list of options, eg. you either come from a rich poor or middleclass family, you had certain pre ordained events take place in your life which you can choose from, you studied certain subjects at school (if you went to a school) and you did certain things while growing up like burning down a school, giving generously to charity, stealing from your granny, etc, and you may have been robbed, you may have been donated lots of money, you may have had to earn your living up to the point of your characters creation. By choosing from all of these options your character gains more substance and a backstory with which npc's may react at the beginning of the game until you choose your own destiny by your future actions. (This idea stems from several sources, I dread to mention what I'm about to mention for fear that the idea will be dismissed simply because of it, this idea stems partly from mass effect char creation.)

Stephen.

There should be also a way to join a church guild.

Oh yeah and 50th post celebration.