To expand on my reasoning, there are really two "big things" that the Elder Scrolls games have been hinting at. As each Elder Scrolls game seems to hint at or build toward the next, after the dust settles in Oblivion and The Infernal City (Unless something comes out of left field in the second book of that series; which isn't altogether unreasonable), there is left the fact that Akavir has slowly become a more and more relevant plot element, and, of course, the big guy that starts with an "L", has a killer whale in the middle, and ends with an "n." Since we've been steadily freeing pieces of him too. But I don't feel the latter has quite... matured enough yet. You know that Bethesda's going to have to find some way to come up with a plot as historically relevant or important as the ones in TES II, III, and IV, so that gives us at least a little bit to infer with. Recall that in Morrowind, it was predicted by characters within the game that the gates of Oblivion were going to burst open and Tamriel would become besieged by daedra. We all know how that went!

This will also make Mecantile skill usefull.

Daemonica had a lovely unobtrusive compass.

Now, it also had something very interesting: on your map, you could make a a green "X" mark. Once you exit the map, there's an arrow somewhere on the screen (I don't recall the specifics too much because I rarely used this function) that would "point" in the direction of the location you had marked. So, it's a "quest compass" sort of thing that you made yourself, with the dynamic indication of Bioshock's Objective Compass. It is limited and entirely up to the player, and mostly useful (in Daemonica) for navigation.

Well, there is one thing I liked in Oblivion better than in Morrowind, and it is the fact that in Oblivion you have much more realistic creatures, that is what made me feel like I'm in some kind of other version of my own reality. I understand this is partly a fantasy game, but too much fantasy is not good always. There has to be some balance. But, to each his own, that is just my opinion.

Regarding mounts, to me personally, horses in Oblivion had no use, except for fast travel. On the other side, if they would make fighting available when you are mounted to a horse I just fear the game would be too easy. So, my conclusion, from my experience, horses as were in Oblivion - not necessary thing, and if mounted fighting available - game not tough enough. It would be realistic, but I am not sure if they would do it so that it doesn't disturb the game balance.

If there would be TES 5, I would certainly like it to be a more tough regarding leveling, and tougher in general. When I started Oblivion I was surprised that I can kill a human at the start of the game, while in Morrowind I had big troubles fighting rats when I began first quest. When I passed half of the main quest in TES 4, there was already weak chance for me to get killed, only by accident (I played on moderate). That was a bit of a turn off.

If the arrow's pointing to the top of your screen...

Fair enough, but I'd rather have a compass than a mini-map.

Yeah, but in Morrowind you had those. A directional compass, real-time minimap, and a world map of major locations.

I agree with you, I was totally fine with 'mundane' creatures, but it wouldn't hurt to push that envelope a little farther.

Fighting from a horse wouldn't really upset any balances. It would help you feel less handicapped while riding a horse but you wouldn't be overpowered. If the AI was to be smarter, intelligent creatures would dodge out of the way and try to attack from behind.

There needs to be NO levelling. At the beginning, a rat should be fairly easy to kill, a NPC should be rather hard, and an ogre should be absolutely impossible, but they should still be out there. As you progress in levels rats should be a joke, npcs fairly easy and ogres a good fight. But the rat:npc:ogre population number ratio should remain the same. This would actually make you feel like you just picked up a sword at level1, and make you actually feel like you're a master of fighting at level 45.

How would mounted combat be overpowered in any way?

If the controls will be anything like oblivion, it would be the clumsiest thing ever.

Eh. IMO, familiarity is le boring. And Cyrodiil was nothing if not picturesque familiarity.

I agree. Also, I don't like how it promoted the slaying of real-world animals, such as mountain lion, bear, and wolf. Do you think I enjoyed the fact that the only response was combat to the death? No, not at all! >:(

That's another gripe I've mentioned - the fact that all non-humanoids exist only to be killed, and always engage humanoids in suicidal attacks.

First off, Oblivion is my favorite game ever and I've been playing computer games for over 20 years. So thanks for all the hard work done by everyone involved in that game.

Back to the thread topic though. For me the biggest weakness in Oblivion was the melee combat system. Would be great if more depth could be brought in to this element of any future TES games. Introduce real world martial arts moves and have top notch motion capture to do it. Games from the past that I really got hooked on by methods such as these are Prince of Persia and Panza Kickboxing (with the customisable move sets). Have a toggle button to switch to enhanched combat mode where all the buttons relate to grabs, kicks, punches, etc. and when you want to go back to casting spells, etc. hit the toggle button again and go back to basic combat mode. Perhaps you could learn styles and move sets from hidden gurus?

Another thing I love in games is freedom of movement. Wouldn't it be awesome if on top of all the fantatic single player RPG action (and lots of hours of it too) that we had in Oblivion, that the game at it's most basic level (eg traveling around) allowed the player to move around like a free runner (another toggle button for this perhaps - enhanced travel mode?).

The other thing I would love to have in future TES games (I'm asking a lot I know) would be to be able to shapeshift into an eagle, a dolphin, a mole, a cheetah, etc. To be able to soar over the world or burrow under it would be breathtaking IMO.

Finally, as people will be playing any future TES games for most likely hundreds of hours, would be great if the game taught the player some real world skill that they could take away with them after playing the game. Right at the start of the character generation process you could select if you wanted to perhaps learn more about a real world foreign language, music, chemistry, etc. and this choice would flavour mini games within the game. Can't think of any game that has done that before and such a socially conscious inclusion would certainly gain plaudits from the most conservative of quarters.

Thanks for reading what probably beared more than a passing resemblance to a seven year olds letter to Santa at Chrstmas but was actually written by a bloke in his 30s. That's how much I love TES!

• Realistic arrow flight speed please.

Fixed that for you.

all though the new elder scrolls should keep mundane creature it should have dragons and giants and stuff that would make it more of a fantasy game but still keep some realism

Thanks. I was going to put that too, but I thought, eh... they might as well put in crossbows too and they'll figure it out with keeping "arrows" as a broad term for ranged weapons. Except for throwing weapons...

I actually have a few questions for some of the people posting in this thread...

1) What is with the occasional desire for children in game? Yes, I understand the realism aspect. But did the fact that little tiny Orcs weren't running through the streets REALLY upset your gaming experience in Morrowind or Oblivion? Did they really make Fallout THAT much better? Personally, my answer to that is no.

2) Why dragons? Why the desire to see them flying around/being able to ride them/having them suddenly become common occurrences on Tamriel?

Anyway, now my single suggestion...

I want inclusion of more small towns. I loved stumbling upon Hla Oad or Khuul in my travels through Morrowind. I loved stumbling across a collection of houses, or the randomness of Molag Mar. It added charm and culture to the game for me.

uh why dragons lets see they are big epic and they usually have epic loot therefor its a win win situation

and i dont know why people desire children probably to make it more realistic but i say they shouldn't since i wouldnt want to see kids putting children massacre videos on youtube

Dragons are pretty cliche and overused. And in TES lore, they are rare and sacred and extremely well-hidden (read as: they do not wish to be found and therefore aren't). Not to mention that a dragon is not something that a single hero can take down. The number of individuals that could remotely bring down a dragon would cause Gamebryo to shed salty tears trying to render them on the screen.

Plus, dragons are too obvious a grab for "epic," which is actually a detractor in my book.

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Dredging up an old post of mine from several months ago, here's what I envision regarding actually putting the "Radiant" in Radiant AI, and AI that factors in fuzzy logic:

Well, the first step towards a more coherent AI system is to give guards the ability to take NPCs to jail. That way, petty theft doesn't get punished by death, and punishment by death doesn't lead to factional revolt against impossible odds.

The second is to incorporate some form of desire versus consequences scale for actions, with numeric thresholds determined by AI personality settings to decide when certain actions are taken and certain actions aren't. For example, City-Swimmer gets caught stealing bread. The nearby patrolling legionnaire attempts to take her in. City-Swimmer numerically evaluates her chances of survival by resisting arrest (guard's skills and attributes versus her own), the accuracy of which is determined by some skill/attribute based perception algorithm. Then, City-Swimmer's evaluation is compared to City-Swimmer's aggression rating. If her aggression is high enough to offset the the chances of survival (assuming the chances of survival were evaluated as low), then City-Swimmer could resist arrest and attack. The legionnaire would then pummel City-Swimmer. However, this doesn't have to mean death. The further the percent of City-Swimmer's health drops, the closer that percentage comes to overriding City-Swimmer's high aggression setting. And when it gets low enough, City-Swimmer will yield. The legionnaire will then evaluate whether or not to accept that yield based on his responsibility setting, which, for a guard, would be pretty high (meaning he'd let her live and cart her off to jail). That's the huge gaping problem with our current AI setup. It's all or nothing, and no room for in between or dynamic decision-making based on constantly-changing outside factors. But the outside factors aren't too terribly difficult to add in.

This would apply to a multitude of situations, as well. For example, Bethesda cited the residents of Bravil's skooma den as a good example of why they toned down RAI. The skooma addicts were given a desire for skooma. And there is a skooma merchant just across the way. However, the addicts have no money for skooma, yet their desire is their sole focus, so they promptly would go kill the skooma merchant to satisfy their given desire. All or nothing; fulfill at all costs. With the system above, the skooma addicts would evaluate the consequences for murder (perhaps by developers pre-assigning specific actions and parameters with numeric values to indicate severity of consequences). Then, the numeric strength of their desire for skooma would be weighed against that numeric evaluation of consequence, as well as responsibility settings. If their desire wasn't strong enough to outweigh the consequences, then they'd refrain from murder yet still retain the desire for skooma.

That's the basic form. If we added in the possibility of desire increasing as the amount of time passes that it goes unfulfilled, things would get more interesting. Not to say that all skooma addicts would reach the point of desire where murder would be justified for them, but some would (dependent upon AI personality settings) Further, if we added other options to achieve the goal of skooma, that would increase the interesting factor. Skooma addicts need money to fulfill cravings? Then allow for NPCs to find scripted freelance work around town, odd jobs and what not. Whether those jobs are the more traditional and legal sort, or the slightly questionable sort, depends on the NPC and the AI conditions for hiring. The job itself, visually, wouldn't be more complex in nature than having two or three lines of dialogue, and a few "go here" AI directions. Everything else would be happening behind the scenes. And with their newfound money, the skooma addicts could feed their habit and sink themselves back into poverty, thus necessitating the repeat of the process.

1) Mostly for me, it's the realism. It wasn't such a big deal in Vvardenfell since Mer don't spawn as often as the races of Man, and Vvardenfell was a frontier sort of place.... Anyway, TESIV's clone plastic people underscored, for me, the lack of age variety - from young advlt to doddering old codger.

2) Not something I'm particularly interested in personally. There's quite a lot of mention of their existence in Redguard (where you meet and slay a red dragon), and you'd think they might hang out in Cyrodiil (the Empire reveres them and enlists their aid). However, I'm perfectly happy to let it be something as rare as Karstaag.

Agree with more (and small) towns. However, I felt ALL the towns and cities in TESIV were very small. It was like I was getting a diorama of Cyrodiil, a (over)simplified representation. I know there are game limits, but I'm sure there are tricks you can use to create the illusion of expansive settlements.

but dragons or something that is larger then an average size would be an ideal boss unlike oblivion were most of the bosses were normal sizes

I never really thought of a TES game as needing "bosses." Sure, there are powerful dudes in the TES games, but you don't have to go and kill all of them. Of course there are the foes you have to beat in the main game - Dagoth Ur, Almalexia, Hircine's Aspect. But size doesn't necessarily translate into combat prowess.

im talking about dungeon bosses as they refer to in uesp.net/wiki/ all the bosses where just regular npc's that may have had a spell or 2 even on the hardest mode there not that dificult

On the whole animal/creature stuff - In the game Risen, every creature has a "warning howl"so that means that If the player get near animals they will give you a warning to go away, and if you do so, they will not attack you, and go about their buisness.

It doesn't take dragons to solve that issue.