in an hypothetic (sp?) world where you can create the perfect TES game, considering that most people is mad at skyrim because the lack of features, how your perfect TES woul be?
My opinion:

-questlines from morrowind
-spellmaking, arena and guild ranks from oblivion
-all the rest from skyrim (graphics, perks, smithing, NPCs and combat)

and yes, nothing from daggerfall for me, I hated it

Big consequences.

I agree with everything except the spell making and quest lines from MW... i think quests styles from the BG series and original fallouts, and some adventures from DnD pnp would be "cooler"

Black marsh setting, seamless world with zero loading cells, a map approximately the size of World of Warcraft, mutually exclusive guilds, character development based on skills (more than Morrowind's) + attributes + perks, some deformable terrain, branches in the main quest (as in helping the 'evil' as an option), a dialogue system a la BioWare or Obsidian, stealth like in the Thief series (the guards patrolling, the non-lethal knockdowns, the torches, the ropes, etc...) and rare/unique/handplaced loot like in Morrowind.

While I liked the world and quests in Morrowind better (including the two expansions) I like everything else in Skyrim better. So maybe a combo of the two.

Try to image what Vivec City would look like with Skryim graphics, or the great shell of Ald'ruhn, or the plant towers of Sadrith Mora, or any of the Daedric ruins, or Desele's House of Earthly Delights, etc.

the things I misss most are the combat roll you get from acrobatics in oblivion (was essential to my playstyle and right now you have to sprint away and sprint back to get away from some attacks) and the size of guild questlines from oblivion too but other than that skyrim is D.A.F.

I'd rather take only the best written quests from morrowind rather than whole questlines because they had some horrible filler quests. Arena would be nice but spellmaking was broken, they need to completely re-make it. Skyrims perks, smithing and graphics all need a lot more work too.

Making a perfect tes game is pretty much impossible.

I think I came...

imagining Vivec right now- big bland ziggurats, hard to navigate layout, the same bland boring insides.... paint drying is more fun to imagine...

• Set in the whole of Nirn
  
• Gameworld closer to Daggerfall in size, or at the very least, 20x larger than Skyrim, including more realistic sized cities


• More attention to detail than Daggerfall, with random generation used mostly only for wilderness areas


• Daggerfall's character creation / development system
  
• No markers
  
• Limited fast-travel at a cost
  
• No essential NPCs
  
• No 3rd person whatsoever
  
• Written dialogue, with small amounts of voice acting like Morrowind
  
• Much more emphasis on factions and side quests than a main quest
  
• More meaningful choices
  
• Combat similar to Mount & Blade
  
• Much slower sense of progression, with 1000s of hours before your character becomes all-powerful
  
• No level-scailing at all
  
• Pitch black dungeons that require a torch to navigate, with complex designs like Daggerfall
  
• More complex weapon/armour stats e.g. certain types of armour being more/less effective against certain types of weapons, restricting movement, etc

IDD, Morrowind is one of my favorite games of all times but i have never understood all this praise to it's dunmer architecture, it's just plain ugly, and orange, way too orange.. not to mention that everything looks exactly same. I liked the imperial forts and such much more than the dunmer cities in that game.

@sheogorath
No 3rd person at all? Not even for just looking at your character? Well that would make one part of character creation totally useless. Also the combat from Dark Messiah of M&M would be better for TES than mount and blades because it's made for first person only.

My perfect TES game would probably be a mix between various games, a lot of the current gameplay in Skyrim should be saves as it does the job quite nicely. However there are things in Skyrim I would like to have replaced to get a more deeper rpg out of it.

Character creation
When creating your character you get to choose the following things, looks, starting skills, background options and traits

Backgrounds would be a set of different backgrounds your character could come from, was he a farmer or maybe a trader? Maybe he was a soldier in a army or a hired thug? Maybe he is well known or maybe he is unknown to majority of people. No matter what you choose here it should have an impact on your gameplay, if you choose that he is a well known trader you would get a boost in skills governing trading, but people would also recognize you which could be both good and bad. After all being a well known person also attracts more thieves right?

Traits would be to spice it up even more, want your character to be One of the best smith's in the world, no problem, but hey you cannot choose a trait like that without also have to choose a disadvantage. In basic it should be a certain amount of options for character flavor that could enhance and make your character more unique. Each positive trait would have a number attached to it. That number would determine the power of the trait, but you also had to keep the score on trait's at 0 so choosing a level 3 power means you have to choose negative powers that matches this score. This could be things like color blindness, reduced hearing, reduced stamina regen or no natural regen at all, same with health and magicka. Things that weould impact your character in various ways, of course if you don't want to choose anything then you don't have to, it is 100% for flavor nothing else.

Skills and Perks
I would keep the current system but expand on it, maybe split up a few weapon skills to even more enhance and specialize those weapons. Hand to Hand would be back, same with a skill that replaced acrobatics and Athletics.

General gameplay
Armors and weapons do degrade with use so you have to fix them or they would break for good. fixing them you can do in cities or at blacksmiths, either by doing it yourself if you are a smith or pay the smith to do it for you.

Spellmaking would be back, but toned down a bit to prevent the possibilities of making insane stupid spells. You would be able to play with fire as an element, but it would also have a cap to avoid people making the most powerful spell and turn it into one button mashing and playing with spell crafting could also backfire if you are not careful. After all you don't know the real effect of the spell before you have tested it.

Climbing would be back as a skill, as would spells like Levitation.

There should be skills and spells for disguising yourself, however some guards would have means to look past this disguise and find you no matter how high your skill is.

Thieves would be more active, if you as a player buys a house you also have the chance to hire guards or buy guard dogs to keep your valuables safe. Also safes and other safe storage deposits would be possible to buy. A working bank where you can deposit money and valuables. The more known you are the higher the chance a thief would try his luck on your house also.

Reputation system that actually works, if you play as an assassin and is seen whilst killing, who would know of you? All witnesses is dead, so word of your deeds would not spread, or are you sure all witnesses are dead? When you do things the game records it and if certain criteria is in effect your action might not be known, or it could spread like fire. If you play a Paladin type and helps people you will be known for this and people expect you to help them, but would their wish for assistance be real all the time? Or do they have some darker plans behind it. If you play a mage and accidentally burns down a village, you will be known for it. You as a player would be able to carve your destiny in the world, and based on your playstyle you could be known as a ruthless killer or be totally unknown but the biggest assassin the world had seen. You could also have a choice to leave a mark behind you, like a token or a mark on a wall that is your signature. By leaving this signature for other to find you will become known this way, but they wouldn't know who was behind the signature or would they? The idea would be to make it so that the player felt these things actually had a effect on him, a ruthless killer would be denied access to cities during daytime. The only way you could get into a city would be to either sneak in at night or disguise yourself. while as a hero of the lands you would be welcomed by people everywhere, they would want to give you small gifts like food, potions tokens of their gratitude, but some of them would not be wanting you to survive the gift.

Lockpicks and gold should have a weight attached to them, no longer could you run around with ten thousands of gold on you because the weight alone would be too much to carry.

A real difference between armors, Heavy armor gives more protection, but also slows you down and make life as spell caster a tad more difficult. Light armor makes life easier for the people who want to be more agile and flexible, where no armor means your reflexes are quick, you can move more silently and have none of the disadvantages armors would give you.

When traveling the world and in cold or warm areas you would require to dress accordingly. Falling into a cold river at winter time? well then get a fire cracking and get the heat back into your body, want to wander around in the snow be sure to put some warm clothing on, want to run around at a warm summer day, then running around in warm clothing might not be as good for your health. The idea would simply be to add realism, but not overdo it so player have to change clothes after the season. If he wants to use winter clothing in the summer, then he should be able too, but there should be a disadvantage to it.

Factions
Several factions should be available to join, but they should also have their counterparts.
Fighter guild would have a counterpart and both wanted to control the area of expertise they have. Cooperation is not possible and in the end only one will be able to call them self the real fighter guild
Mage guild would be a mayor part, but also have a greater enemy wanting to remove their power. Could it be a guild of necromancers and warlocks? Mages who live off summoning undeads and demons to wreck havoc for them. Why are they around what is their purpose and why do they not like the Mage guild?
Dark Brotherhood would have it's counterpart and some quests you did would be timed so that you actually had to do them in a specific amount of time or else the competing guild would get the credit for the kill
Thieves guild would be a bunch of small guilds, could the player unite their strength or take one of the smaller ones into greater glory?
Merchants would unite and compete about being the best merchants in the world, several groups that would give the player the option to choose one and also help them build up and choose what to specialize in
Outlaws would be a faction, there would be clans for werewolves and families to join if you choose to become a vampire,

UI
Give the players the option to customize what the UI should show.
Toggle enemy health
Toggle compass markers
Toggle compass
Toggle your own Health/stamina/Magicka

In basic you as a player should be able to customize what you want to see on the screen, some want to see everything, some want to see just a few things and other prefer no UI at all for immersion value

Quests
All quests should have a general description of their whereabouts, this way you don't have to use a compass marker if you don't want too. Some quests should have a consequence, presented by 2 choices the one you choose will affect your game more then you would think. By allowing a person to live rather then kill him he could come back and save your day one time you are in deep problems, or by killing him someone would want revenge for his death. Would you lie to keep the shiny item you were supposed to deliver or would you actually deliver it. What would happen if the person you lied to found out that you lied to him and kept the item?

Well a paper doll as part of the menus is fine. Just no 3rd person in actual gameplay.

"The Perfect TES"? They'd have to make at least 2 games, one for the player-centric Action gamers and one for the character-based RPG players.

I'd rush out immediately to buy an open-world game with Morrowind's faction politics, faction skill requirements, and task skill checks (a bit eased up to avoid low-level frustration, perhaps), Daggerall's character creation options, and Skyrim's graphics and animations, with some of Oblivion's side-quest ideas thrown in.

Given a cross between Daggerfall's/Morrowind's combat attack options and Oblivion's/Skyrim's more fluid and action-oriented approach, relying on BOTH the character's skills (with animations reflecting blocks, dodges, misses, and weak/glancing hits) and the player's (if it hits solidly, it does at least some damage), I think it could satisfy both parties to a reasonable degree.

A better set of dialog branches and choices, with consequences, would help put the "game" back into the game. Falling back to a "mostly voiced" system, where the major questlines, greetings, and other common dialog is voiced, but you could "dig deeper" for text-based lore and background info that would be prohibitively expensive to voice-act, might offer the best of both worlds, since only those players who really want that kind of depth would ever encounter the text and "deal with it", while the more action-oriented players would rarely or never see it.

Quests with actual usable directions, and the OPTION to use the Compass and/or Fast Travel, or not use them and still be able to find the location from the directions given, would again offer both parties what they want.

It would also need to bring back the lost functionality that Attibutes provided, while keeping Perks but using them more for unique abilities or higher-level specializations, not as simplistic bonuses to skills. The "multiplier" system of earlier games needed to go away and stay gone.

This.

I had a whole thread which was me ranting about this.

There are many things I can think of. The way followers interact and have story lines about them like in Fallout New Vegas would be one of them.

I would love to have bigger decisions that people would comment on. And if people know my rep, then I want them to nag me for favors if I'm a good guy, or shudder in fear each time I step in their path

What with no restrictions?

Double featured gameply choices. One requiring player skill, intelligence and stats and another mostly intelligence and stats.

All of Nirn that is done perfectly and never steps on its own Lore.

Very well written quests with tons of variety and surprises. Unlimited quests too.

Quests that need to be done without quest markers or can be done with them. It makes no difference except one lets you figure things out for yourself.

Realistic choice and consequence. From the race you choose to be to what you decide to do. Everything has a consequence big or small...

I think you can see where I am going with this...

Well, it's more a brown, clay colour than orange, but apart from the Redoran and Hlaalu architecture being a similar colour, in what conceivable way did the architecture look the same? One is weird blue-green pyramid things with lurge arching buttresses, one is organic crab creature shapes, one is box-like adobe architecture that I couldn't pinpoint a simple comparison for, and one is a collection of mushrooms and gigantic vines that twist together.

by bg storylines do you mean evil demigods planning massmurders or cursed mages trying to regain their immortality?

Everything from Morrowind with graphics from Crysis 2.