I'm unsure if this has been done before, but thought it might be a good alternative to the TES:V Ideas & Suggestions thread which oftentimes gets bogged down in "wall of text" posts (no offence intended; I've done it once or twice myself :whistling: ).

Anyway, the idea is that you post, in DESCENDING order of importance to you, the top 5 things that you would most like to see improved/included in TES:V, along with a BRIEF explanation, if needed. Here is mine as an example:

1. NPC AI - just enough to provide the illusion that they're 'smart'.......my most important preference
2. Levelling system - no more bandits with glass armour
3. More immersive and dynamic political/guild system
4. The way you play the game dynamically affects the ending (i.e. good/neutral/evil)
5. More variation and topics for dialogue...........................................my least important preference - out of the 5

RESIST the temptation to get 'wordy' with your replies. Short & sharp is the idea, otherwise you might as well just post in the Ideas & Suggestions thread mentioned above.....And please don't criticise someone else's preferences otherwise we just end up with flamewars, and the mods have to come in with firehoses etc..... :flamethrower: (I know that's not a firehose....)

I'm looking forward to reading yours..... :nod:

1) Construction Set - It's what enables a huge amount of replayability, and allows us to update the game as hardware advances (QTP3, RAEVWD, etc)
2) Levelling System - Same as your bandit issue, but also the whole stat multiplier thing. It's awful. If you're not careful in how you level, you get weaker as you level. I want to enjoy playing the game, not worry about 'effective levelling'.
3) AI - Same as your description.
4) More voice actors
5) Much larger world, for a much larger scale, and a much more immersive experience. Just Cause 2 sized game world, so long as the landscaping and content doesn't suffer. I didn't like always being able to see a dungeon in Oblivion. There was rarely a moment where all you could see were trees and fields. Felt far too compacted.

This is a good idea. It'll be interesting to see how many top 5's come out the same.

I often get too wordy in responses, but I'll do my best to keep it short and sweet;

1. More realistic/deadly combat; More realism in general - a few hits should be enough to kill someone, put more focus on dodging and blocking so gameplay doesn't become too fast paced; eating, sleeping, diseases, dressing for the weather, etc
2. Longer questlines; more quests; more things to explore; more things to find - I ran out of things to do far too often, and it became methodical after my third character or so
3. No OB quest compass; No OB fast travel - use more in-depth directions including lots of landmarks to describe how to get somewhere; and use Morrowind's fast travel, or some other form of LIMITED fast travel
4. More people in the main cities; more little villages; more people in those little villages - at least doubled; at least tripled, there were more main cities than villages; at least tripled, each village had like 4 people in them.
5. Very limited NPC levelling - I often regretted levelling up as it just made combat more tedious without adding any challenge

1. Choices. I want to be able to refuse a quest or take it in several different directions. (Oh yeah, and no non-killables)
2. Story. Let's not have the same end of the world thing again, ok? It's been done a million times!
3. Leveling system. At the beggining of the game I should have enemies I can kill and enemies I can't kill. The game should get slightly easier as I progress.
4. More interesting gameplay effects. I want to be able to pick up a rock and throw it away from me to distract nighttime guards without it being totally scripted and a one-scenario case. (and other stuff like that)
5. More skills. At least to the variety of Morrowind, if not more.

1. Lore
2. Storytelling
3. Unique and well designed world
4. More steriotypical races
5. More Modability. <--- one of my favourite aspects of TES.
....


4,509. Graphics.

Seriously, I don't want a great emphasis of the graphical side of the game. It should come after some of the other, more important parts, imo.


EDIT:

Actualy, 1-4 may all be "Lore". If so, here's another list

1. Lore
2. Modability
3. Weeding out the facepalms from past games (levelling, bugs, etc)
4. More skills
5. Gameplay effects. Like said above, throwing a rock to distract would be great.

• More depth to the gameworld- Fleshed-out NPCs, culture, dialogue, atmosphere.
  
• More unique hand-placed items and artifacts.
  
• More customization- Separate two pauldrons from cuirass, separate gaunlets, perhaps add more skills (at least make each skill more useful).
  
• Better combat. More interesting attacks and flow of battle. Telekinesis in combat, etc.
  
• Better engine, including AI tweaks, physics, Umbra Software, animations, etc. Good thing we know it's being done.

1. Variety - I want an insane level of unique textures and world details (two houses next to each other that don't look the SAME)
2. Lore/Politics!
3. Surprises - my favorite moments in TES are the ones I never saw coming (falling mage outside Seyda Neen anyone?)
4. Revised inventory system - Both III & IV were challenges (do I really need to see all those freaking keys?!?!)
5. Jeremy Soule - I still take walks in the woods with Morrowind in my ear-buds...

Well, most of what's already been posted, difficult to pick 5, so here's a couple more-

- A sense of time passing. Days of the week should matter, market days, public holidays, fairs coming to town once a month, seasons. houses get built/falling into ruin.
- Sort of linked; Play actions should affect the world. Player choices should have long term consequences e.g. on the wealth of towns perhaps on the morale/numbers/equipment of factions the player is involved in. E.g. a vampire player's predations mean there's fewer citizens on the streets after dark, but more guards and vampire hunters, and the city gates get locked at night.

As regards the whole levelling/ difficulty thing, I would be happy if they borrowed wholesale from the ideas included in Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul.

-

1. CS/Modability
2. Interesting, original and varied background w/o too many of the cliches that infest fantasy
3. Varied quests that have a variety of endings and can be resolved by a variety of methods
4. Many different factions that interact with each other
5. Freedom to create any type of character I desire combined with a character levelling system that encourages diversity of character

1. A lot of new lore, including more new ingame books
2. Bring back spears / hellebards and all those other weapons from Morrwind that were missing in Oblivion
3. More different types of dungeons and also more variety within the dungeons of one type
4. Unique culture / storyline
5. More small villages ( 8+ houses) like in Morrowind that are acually connected by ways with way signs leading to them, not only 2-3 houses (that's not a village!) somewhere in the wilderness like in Oblivion

Those are the most important ones I can think of now.

1) CS/Modding. The more options for modders, the better.
2) More realistic world/narrative (not in the sense of having your character go to the bathroom or low HP; but in the sense that the main quest and guild questlines and so on don't take place in a vacuum, that the quests are a component of the sandbox, not a separate module). Includes more acknowledgment of your choices, and more choices to make (to kill or not kill enemies, to ambitiously pursue rank or just do your job, to help all the little people or rush to save the world, etc.).
3) More variety in gameplay mechanics (climbing, acrobatic moves, etc.) as well as monster types (spiders that crawl on walls and drop from ceilings; swarms of ordinary rats or insects; ghosts that don't appear and fight so much as throw items, make spooky noises, cause hallucinations, etc.). Basically, more types of problems to for the player to solve by applying character abilities.
4) Dynamic "quests" from guilds (bounty hunting, arena fights, targeted theft, mafia legbreaking & assassination, etc.)
5) No more incentive to micromanage stat increases or grind for skills.

1) much bigger world. their games seem to be getting smaller no? I like the gigantor factor in these games.
2) high lvl cap. 50 at the lowest. 200 at the highest. make different areas in game that would be suited for each lvl.
3) better npc's. they are the thing that makes the game MOST immersive if only you put effort into making them good. this includes better animations which is number four on my list.
4) better animations. npc's do stuff other than walk, talk, and eat. play instruments (probabaly number 6 on my list. how come theres no instruments?) . lean against walls. take out their sword to proudfully examine it when their bored. etc. etc. etc.
5) i want to be able to throw potions. i dont know why. i just do. like if i specialize in hand to hand, then i should be able to throw a poison at someone because alchemy is another one of my skills.

1. Good storyline
2. Better character design (the characters in oblivion looked horrible!)
3. Better AI (guards don't react immediately etc.)
4. good/neutral/evil system (like in fo3)
5. Bigger gameworld (bigger than it was in oblivion. should be something like the size of Morrowind or a little bigger)

1. good storyline
2. better combat and animaitions
3. more choices on how to complete quests
4. more diverse world thats fun to explore
5. more armor options.

1. CS/Moddability
2. Bigger game world
3. Better optimized engine
4. Revised/better magic system
5. Flying mount

1. Choices & consequences in quests and dialogues (most important).
2. New lore.
3. Complex role-playing system.
4. Interconnected storylines of main quest and guild quests.
5. Improved modability (least important).

the most important thing to me is the world

morrowwind was a wonderful, fantastic setting with unforgettable landscapes...oblivion looked fantastic, but the areas were not very memorable and not nearly as creative and unique as morrowwind.

i just want to see an elder scrolls game finally bring those two aspects together. a less 'generic' fantasy wilderness with more unique landscapes that truly whisk the player off to an alternate reality.


as far as everything else like gameplay, items, characters and lore...i have complete faith in Bethesda.

1. Morrowind style fast travel, with mark, recall and levitation returned
2. More armor options and types
3. More hand placed loot
4. No caves full of bandits wearing glass and daedric armour
5. More small towns and open main cities

If I had to narrow down all my wishes to just 5 I think it would be something like this:

1. An improved leveling system - I think pretty much everyone can agree on this, bandits in glass armor and ebony just breaks immersion, which leads me to my next point....

2. Immersion - I'd like to see a bit more variety. No two dungeons should ever look the same and they should all have a different story to tell. Furthermore, there should be greater variation in landscapes and cities. I'd also like to see some quest lines that deeply explore certain parts of Elder Scrolls lore.

3. Improved Features - I think the magic system is in need of a huge overhaul. I'd like some new spell effects and new ways to practice magic. New effects could be something like flamethrower, traps, mind control, transmutation or necromancery (or whatever necromancers want to call it ) In ways of practice I'm thinking that some spells should be charged up, some should be prepared. Or power attacks with spells; press and hold the cast button to charge up your spell and deliver even more destruction.
For alchemy while making the potions; I'd like a list of available effects that I can just click on and the game will automatically select the needed ingredients, It's actually somewhat bothersome to look through a large load of junk in order to find a particular effect. (Besides, this one sounds pretty easy to code)
Improved Features also include dialogue, combat and so forth.

4. Improved graphics - I'm an artist so graphics is pretty important to me. I don't want my character to look like something my dog chewed on. Nor do I want ugly animations (Bethesda you need to get your hands on some good animation products like Natural Motion, or hire another team of animators. Most of what I've seen so far is pretty ugly, and that's a damn shame)
I also want a unique world that doesn't borrow too much from Lord of the Rings and the Roman Empire. I want an inspiring world.

5. An improved Construction Set - As always the CS is one of the best things about TES. I wish it to be better and more powerful, with a larger arsenal of tools, basically as close to open-source as possible. Here's an idea, make the dialouge system node-based. It would be much more user friendly, rather than looking through and endless list of responses and references.

1 - The ability to mod it, without needing expensive software.

2 - No nods to contemporary anything. Some of us play to forget reality, not revel in it.

3 - Great dialogue, quests, terrain, NPC's and creatures. If you use the same character generator, try and throw in some FACIAL HAIR, not 5:00 shadow.

4 - Make some sea related quests. No, not just the "I fell asleep on the ship with bandits" kind. Get imaginative. I refuse to believe that a game like The Bards Tale can offer water fighting with creatures an no one in your group can.

5 - NO ENDING CREDITS WHATSOEVER. Stay open ended forever, this is your strongest selling point.

1.More amount of towns and cities.2.More amount of NPC's than Morrowind or Oblivion.3.Lager map.4.More various amount of items.5.And a whole ton of books amounting more than what Morrowind had or even Oblivion had.

1. More voice actors! I shouldn't have to explain this.. Oblivion had far too little variety in voice acting, almost everyone sounded alike. Also, bring back Morrowind's Dunmer voice.
2. Jeremy Soule HAS to do the soundtrack, he does an amazing job.
3. Books. Do not scrap books from the game. Many people do not read them but for those who do, it adds a whole lot to the game.
4. Redo the Hand-to-Hand skill. How about designing a martial arts fighting style for the player to learn through quests and seek out old masters of the arts to be trained in it's use.
5. Make it possible to delete spells. Morrowind had this, Oblivion did not.

1. Improved Construction Set
This really should be a given, but I list it just in case.

2. Interesting and belivable world
This is a sort of a catch-all phrase. Interesting world implies good lore and interesting enviroment. Belivable world implies very limited leveling and scaling and more realism in general. Both also imply politics and faction conflicts.

3. More roleplaying options
More options during character creation and more ways to complete quests. Branching questlines would also be great.

4. Focus on sandbox gameplay
Compare factiong quest structure in Oblivion, Morrowind, and Daggerfall. Daggerfall's quest system was the most sandboxy, Oblivion's the least. I'm in favor of more sandboxy, but I'd be satisfied with Morrowind style.

I still need to think about #5

1. A Living world - Things you do for better or worse have more of an impact on the world around you.
2. Bigger distinction between the races, I often felt that the race you chose had little impact on the game, I'd like more unique dialog options for different races - Different introductions would be sweet as well.
3. Better combat system - More varied melee attacks, Armor on your legs will not protect from strikes to arms, better weapon specializations etc.
4. Better party system - I like being able to build relationships with people in the game the characters in Oblivion that joined my party to help seemed a little too suicidal and not very cooperative.
5. More rare enemies, items, and locations.

Well, it seems this topic has gone off the boil, so thought I would jump back on and provide a summary of sorts/thoughts, and hopefully spur some further top 5's from more forumers. I have read through the thread and here are my impressions:

I noted the pattern of use of adjectives like: unique, varied (variety), interesting, distinctive, rare, memorable, diverse.....

There was only 1 mention of improved graphics - and the poster is a graphic artist, so no surprise there. I would have thought there would be more mentions of improved graphics....


If I could provide a top 5 of everyones' top 5 I think it would look something like this:

1. Construction set/improved modability (10 mentions). I completely overlooked this aspect in my top 5, and in retrospect, I too would make this my number 1 choice. One could almost argue that the construction set is, in general, seen as more important than the game itself. That's an interesting observation and one that I hope is not lost on the developer.....

2. Lore & storyline (10 mentions of either). I combined these two as they are interrelated....kinda

3. Larger world & more towns/villages (8 mentions of either). Once again I combined these as they are interrelated.....kinda

4. More choices & consequences, i.e. what you do has an effect on the game, and greater roleplaying options/complexity (8 mentions).

5. General improvements to the gameworld in terms of uniqueness, depth, diversity and variety and the 'sandbox' appeal.

So, please keep 'em coming. I think it was a worthwhile exercise and thank you to all those who have posted so far. Just remember to try to keep it short and sharp!