If you ask me if I had to choose between having to live with essential NPC's and having to live with poor and crippled character mechanics, I think the later ruins the rpg-experience much much more.

I hear you. That's why I stopped playing DAO after an hour of so, once I realized I coulf not kill any of those snooty mages in the guild. At least in Skyrim you can get some satisfaction in knocking Maven unconscious. But when I cast my fire spell in DAO right at the head of the archmage and he just looks at me and asks if I need somehting. I put the controller down and put Oblivion back in my PS3. I still like Skyrim, quite a lot but I hear what you are saying and I do think the game could be improved by having fewer essential characters, maybe even have a toggle switch in the Options menu to turn them all off for advanced players.

They really need an Options menu for advanced roleplayers, maybe only unlockable with a special downloadable code that you have to sign a short bold print contract saying that by accepting this download you are an advanced roleplayer and are not going to whine and complain if using these options "ruins" your game. Maybe charge five or ten bucks for it. They could have difficulty sliders for sneak. Sliders that increase the number of enemy spawns (larger groups). More options for customizing your compass and crosshair, like turning off all the markers on the compass, turning it off entirely, turning off sneak crosshair, and making all of it independant, so it was not an all or nothign choice.

Then to make it really worth ten bucks, they could add all sorts of goodies, like additional text based dialog options so we could do quests Morrowind style.

There is only so much they can do to make Skyrim more fun for serious roleplayers without alienating the mass audience, but they could do a lot fairly easily.

I think this is a nice idea.
I certainly would buy a 'hardcoe' expansion for Skyrim if it rids it of essential NPC's.
One of the things I enjoy the most about Fallout: New Vegas is the hardcoe mode where you have to eat, drink and sleep to stay alive, apart from just keep your radiation level down.
I think this would be a great addition to this hypothetical Skyrim expansion.
It would make the player more a part of the world, rather than apart from it.
It would be especially great if this expansion included more recipes for cooking.

Morrowind didn't have you getting hunted down or the world getting destroyed like Daggerfall. Also, all games but Daggerfall have only one ending. Therefore, by lack of choice, I declare all games Morrotrash.

It's just people's opinion, they liked Morrowind better, you like Skyrim better, it doesn't really matter, just enjoy the games you like without worrying about other people's opinion.

Not that I consider killing-everything-you-can serious or advanced...but it doesn't hurt me to give people the option, so sure why not.

Yes! After 24 hours without food, drink, sleep, your character starts loosing health/stamina. That would be another good addition to such an options menu. I know there are a lot of mods for stuff like that, but it should be part of the game itself, accessible by console players. I try to remember to eat and sleep regularly but sometimes I forget, so a reminder from the game that my character is getting weaker from exhaustion/malnurishment would really add to immersion.

Yeah, I get that this stuff would not appeal to everyone, and just casue some would like it doesn't necessarily make them more "advanced" or serious about their gaming then others. How about instead of calling it an "advanced" or "hardcoe" options menu, they call it something like the "hair brained lunitic" options menu or better yet the "Morrowind lover's" option menu.

And I would not necessarily want it to fall into the wrong hands because I could totally see some folks trying to play with these options and just getting confused and frustrated. Whatever they call it it should be a name that would not make people feel compelled to get it just to get 100% completion on all their Xbox trophies, and make sure that there are no trophies associated with it at all.

And then make all of the options on the menu independant so that even folks who paid to install it could pick and choose which they wanted to use, not make it an all or nothing thing. I might not want to remove essential tags for all my characters, but I would pay to have it as an option, along with some of the other options discussed above.

There's a plot reason why that family is essential (and not merely "protected" like companions). And they couldn't come with any alternatives in that case.

Well, to specify on three things:

1. Oblivion and Morrowind didn't just send you into dungeons constantly, they tried to involve you with the characters and cities in the game. Skyrim just tosses you into random dungeons about 90% of the time.
I can have fun crawling through dungeons, sure, but not when the dungeons are just as repetitive as the previous games, just longer, more tedious and less rewarding.

2. Disposition. I liked using Charm spells, I liked how (while it was badly implemented (in both previous titles)) Speech could actually matter. But Skyrim`? Speech is just pointless, and the loss of Charm spell is another hit to Illusion.

3. Illusion. From probably Arena to Skyrim there has become less and less spells with each game, but Illusion right now is just a joke. Previously it was fun to mix and match spells in spell creation or just using the base spells cause it had a wide variety of spells to use. But in Skyrim from what I've seen the only spells that are there is Fear, Courage, Frenzy and Calm, perhaps Paralyzis. But these spells are worthless without the perks and can barely be used. And leveling the skill up takes forever.

Three things I find inferior about Skyrim.
It's Speech system is a joke now, it wasn't very good before but back then it could actually be used a lot of tiems, now it's just a waste of space that's barely ever used except for with guards.

Illusion is now so watered down and with the perk system it just isn't a viable skill for me anymore.
Others might feel different about it but I can't use Illusion now, it just svcks.

And I like games where I just kill crap. I love TF2 and L4D cause it's mindless killing. But they have balanced mechanics and characters and have a wide selection of maps to use.
Skyrim is unbalanced and repetitive.

So these things I found better in Oblivion and what little I played of Morrowind.
Speech were used more often.
Illusion was a viable skill.
And not every quest sent me to a dungeon.

(Channels his inner Vorlon): Understanding is a three-edged sword.

Pure win right here