So, I decided to play Skyrim today after having been pre-occupied for quite some time. Me and one of my friends love to discuss Skyrim and our game play highlights and as I began to play again I Shift+tabbed to open up the steam window overlay and found myself bringing up an old conversation again. This conversation went like this...

Me: "Hey, know what I miss from Oblivion?"
Him: "What?"
Me: "Buff, Debuff, and summon timers..."
Him: "THANK YOU! I am glad I am not the only one who constantly thinks that."

...and so on and so forth. I understood Bethesda wanting to make the UI far sleeker and more... minimalist... eh? Still though, this seemed like the WORST part of the ui to actually remove! At the very least there should be a toggle option. With summons you can kinda figure out when your summon has died, and a select few spells actually do have a visual effect that it easy to distinguish... But even then, there are so many spells and abilities that you have to constantly pause the action, go to magic, go to active, and look through the list. Whats even more mind boggling is the fact that no one has made a mod for this yet! Usually the community is quick to mod stuff like this but no one has yet to since the games release!

I know I am a nobody on here, and the chances of anyone with any connection to the development reading this are slim to none... But can I please have the OPTION to have buff, debuff, and summon timers like in Oblivion back as a built in UI option? I am not saying force it on anyone, but at least give us the option. Having a timer that shows those things is FAR LESS immersion breaking than pausing the game all together and navigating menus, far less tedious, and would be a welcome site for myself and I am sure many others. Again, the chances of this even being seen are slim to none but this is a UI feature that I firmly believe should be implemented as an option! I mean, Bethesda has been patching Skyrim for a while now, this could easily be put into a patch and if a toggle option then no one can really complain about it. Those who would not want it can just leave it disabled and go on as if it never existed while those of us who want to skip the tedious method that we currently have to use can have a bit more convenience and streamlining to our gameplay.

Most, if not all effects do have a distinguishable audio or visual cue to show that they've ended. I usually find that this is enough.

I think the main issue being that effects from things such as shrines last a hell of a lot longer than in Oblivion (hours long), and so you'd be stuck with a timer visible for all that time.