Thank you Bethesda for creating this game. It has been extremely enjoyable for me. I have played over 175 hours and will continue to play more because of DLC. It was well worth my $60, and I plan to purchase your next product because of my satisfaction with this game.

Now that you have accumulated a large fanbase and many new players, you could focus on making the story and role-play elements more fleshed out in future games/expansions. My favorite game and arguably the best RPG ever made (and likely to stay that way) was Planescape: Torment. The immersive original Planescape (DnD) setting along with the incredible novel like story made the game an existential spiritual experience for me. I was literally shaken at the end of the game. It was an amazing piece of literature in game form. These are all weird ways to describe how a game affects you, but that was because it was unique and that good. I don't expect any story or RPG to live up to those standards, but it is very possible to take away elements from it to make future games great.

1. More dialogue - I'd like to see more text. A lot more text. I want to pull stuff out of NPC characters. They should have a distinct personality and lots of dialogue options. Whether it's humorous, informative, or time consuming, it's immersive.
2. Better NPC reactions - I want to see NPCs respond in distinctive ways to eachother. Planescape: Torment had an amazing way of having your NPC companions talk to eachother in unique ways. You had clashing of personalities and they seemed life-like.
3. A story that is more personalized and original - A story can still be epic without the usual "save the world" scenario. It should be more focused around a character. It seems like race/choice of skills has no bearing on how you play the game or how the world reacts to you. (Aside from the "What do you want lizard?" comments from guards)

More to come, I'm just busy at the moment.

They can't fix the core game, and they won't. Your option as I understand is to Mod. If you can't mod, that's your problem, or so I have been told.

Require the need to eat and drink (put cooking to use)
Require the need to sleep (put beds to use again now that sleeping isn't required for leveling)

I was just thinking about Planescape: Torment and how much i miss my flying skull, companions in skyrim svck. It was the first RPG i played, in comparison storyline in Bethesda really lacks imagination and humor.

Given the amount of freedom TES games give the player over who their character is, it's always going to be difficult writing an epic, involving storyline without encroaching on that freedom. It's so much easier if the character has a set personality, background, etc. Also, having an open gameworld doesn't exactly help either. With a linear gameworld, you can really enhance a storyline by crafting everything the player sees around it.

That said, I do agree that storylines in TES games could be improved immensely with more dialogue and dialogue options, and more interesting NPCs.

The Fallout series has always been able to achieve that.

In fact, the one that had the least freedom and least interesting NPCs was the one Bethesda made. In all the others the game left room and had endings for even the most saintly or sinning personality and had memorable characters.

Honestly, the lack of world reactions makes Skyrim restrictive not free. You're constantly fighting against a world that simply won't register your character in any meaningful way. Essentially, no matter how you roleplay you're treated the same.

I'm curious.

Do you think role-play options and the story was watered down intentionally?

The reason I ask this is that perhaps a simpler and less complex narrative is more attractive to your more casual gamer (Such as one who plays Call of Duty, which is not in disrespect) and thus Bethesda took a softer approach as to garner more players so that their sales would increase?

Who knows. Bioware has undeniably been taking the tack of... I don't know... streamlining? The fact that are making a mode in ME3 where you have the game make decisions for you says that loud an clear. And I don't mind streamlining so long as it doesn't remove options. I'm not a fan of complexity for complexity sake. You can have elegant complexity.

With Skyrim, I'm not sure. It seems they spent all their time on the world and forgot to populate it. The fact that they originally thought people would be fine with all the guild quests being made by the radiant system scares me. The radiant system essentially just keeps creating MMO style quests.

I think Skyrim is the best "base" of any BGS game to date, but after building an amazing skeleton they didn't finish filling it in. Partly it's deliberate design--a brush-stroke aesthetic that they're refining with each release (since Morrowind). But I think they would pull people in a lot more if they focused more on story and NPC interaction. I don't need every NPC to be deep and have huge dialog, but IMO there's not a single NPC that fits that description. They should have 20 or more NPCs with deep interaction, and a few followers as well. They could still offer a bunch of generic followers.

The other issue is consequence. I think just about everybody agrees that NPCs could use more attention, but not everyone wants consequence. I'm in the camp that requires choices to change the world, even and especially if that means reducing some options in the game. That gives freedom meaning. IMO, no amount of exploration or world detail will work if there are no consequences, because those consequences are an absolute requirement for the world to feel alive.

Anyway, yeah, I agree with pretty much everything said in the thread so far.

EDIT, BTW @Cap, I think Bioware has chosen to follow the Path of the Bruckheimer, and they're pretty much a non-entity to me now. I won't completely dismiss their games, but they'll be treated with caution and skepticism. I think their long term sales are going to suffer, but who knows, maybe they'll all be living in mansions a couple of years from now.

Racism isn't portrayed well enough in Skyrim.

I would really love to be able to set up a 'base' out in the wilds - like a cave, or more specifically, a dwemer ruin ... I <3 them so much. I realise dwemer ruins are usually massive, but there could be smaller places scattered around - like the storage building.

In any case, just being able to set up a base anywhere in the wilds and not having to use the houses in towns.

Damn right it isn't. An Altmer should have a lot to prove. A khajiit player character should have to smooth talk or bribe guards to enter any city. And that's just for starters.

Mhm.

You mean a reason for Speechcraft perks other than becoming the Donald Trump of Skyrim by lvl. 25? Blasphemy!

Biowares streamling put alot of people out of favour with them in the Dragon Age series,i do not think i have ever seen so much hate for a game as DA 2 got and rightly so.And as for Mass Effect i can't believe they are a making a mode where decisions are made must be a joke surely?

The more I think about it, the more I realize that an open world game as vast as skyrim is no excuse for lack of a decent story. It's already been covered that the radiant ai failed to perform and they were forced to rush the story. Although between FO3/FO:NV and Oblivion/Skyrim, the FO games had better stories. FO3's being top of the list for myself as far as these 4 goes. FO:NV has a better story than Skryim and has a greater degree of freedom with more features.

Bethesda has the ability, I'm sure, of hiring good writers who can look at other games and find ways to make a unique and immersive story with notable characters.

I was looking at the older game Vampires Masquerade: Bloodlines and how excellent they did at voice work along with making interesting characters. (Aside from the game being buggy)

One particular point I want to add to my original post, after a character does something noteworthy, you should have dialogue options to reflect that or other NPCs should react to you differently. I notice some NPCs will be like, "Do you think you can keep up with me?" I want the dialogue option of, "I'm THE MUTHA (Explicit) DOVAHKIIN! I KILL DRAGONS AND AM THE ARCHMAGE OF WINTERHOLD!"

I'm not even exaggerating... I wanted that option.

REALLLLLLLYYYY good ideas. Exactly the thing I have been posting about for weeks on this forum. More DIALOGUE MORE!! lol. Maybe the biggest thing on my list..

I have never heard of planetscape and trust me i know video games very very well.... bit of a nerd in that sense

A reason to have Speechcraft?

That's a first.

Exactly. I don't think the beast races get treated as poorly as they are in lore. Furthermore, I'm sorely disappointed in the lack of camaraderie between like races, especially the Khajiit and Argonians. There isn't one line of dialog spoken by the Khajiit acknowledging that I'm one of their brothers. Even something along the lines of, "it's good to see a familiar face in Skyrim" or something would've been nice.

The most you get from Argonians is "Hello Marsh brother"

It would have been very nice.

Dialog options. THIS is the game's biggest and most significant downfalls. Half the conversations you engage in will leave you with ONE choice. I like options, even if they all lead to the same end.

Other improvements that could be considered: Larger/more populated cities, the option to make your character eat every 24 hours or die, etc.

Actual benefits or consequences for actions.

This is the fifth Elder Scrolls game. It was released in 2011 on a next gen system.

I cannot fathom why becoming the leader of the Dark Brotherhood results in nothing more than simply just getting more assassinations.

That's what bums me about Speech. In many instances, you're given the option to use either Persuade or a normal response, but no matter which one you pick, the outcome is exactly the same.