Quest directions. Can't believe I have to ask for this.

Variety in spells. Powerful spells. More summons. Just more Beth, just more. :/

Aquatic combat? What are you going to fight? Bandits who fall in? I guess you could have like an Argonian fight club quest or something but beyond that it seems kind of useless.

crossbows
spears
underwater combat
the old enchanting style
portable alchemist sets
greaves
more hidden, awesome loot
repairing armor/weapons

I want classic RPG mechanics back.
This includes attributes, and the "spread-sheaty" UI.
This also includes the %chance to hit/dodge, or perform any skill for that matter.
Blocking that actually blocks, not just increase DR.

I want in-depth characters, prefferably with text to read so the "voice-over budget" excuse can't be used.

I want all the spell effects from Morrowind back, and spellmaking too.
I want to be able to pay for enchanting.

I want unique items to be more powerfull than anything you can craft, even if it means nerfing crafting.
(I used to love questing for powerfull items, now they are found at your local blacksmith)

I want all the skills and weapons from Morrowind back.
And the flail someone wanted from Daggerfall sounds cool too.

Attributes
Acrobatics
The skills and spells that have been discontinued
Exclusive guilds like the Houses in Morrowind
High fantasy settings with alien culture and design

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_E_o_0Bdm4GA/TB5Adevnj_I/AAAAAAAA3WM/70-jPvPmhcU/s1600/Giovanni+Andrea+Maglioli,+engravings,+1580-1610.+Two+sea+monsters+riding+the+waves.bmp

Yes, this is something really annoying. There's no point in questing for anything for the sake of the reward now... you're just left with a mediocre story because the rewards are either noexistent or are worse than what you already have/can make yourself. Leveled rewards makes an even bigger difference because even if the "max level" variant of these items are slightly worse than daedric enchanted weapons, that would still be very good at a lower level. But no, there are 4 different versions of every unique item, for level 1-10, 10-20, 20-30, and 30-40 to make sure you never get any powerful items. Boring... Seems like an attempt to "balance" the game too, which is almost ironic considering how unbalanced everything already is.

• All the character stats (skills, attributes, birthsigns)
  
• A system of guild reputation and required skill to be promoted
  
• A journal that I can rely on
  
• NPCs that give directions and talk about their background, skills, their trade, their town, etc
  
• Left/right gloves, pauldrons
  
• Spears
  
• Hidden map that's revealed through exploration

Except for candles you can pick up lanterns, spoons, and forks plates too. lol. A matter of fact my character aedus is carrying a lantern with him because he is afraid of the dark, it doesnt have a candle so it doesnt light anything up, but it makes him feel better. He keeps his candlelight spell in it ^^

I'm glad to see many players are missing the old'n'healthy attribute system. Maybe someone @ Bethesda will reconsider this bold move before they start plans for the next TES. It's not yet too late to make a well thought balanced stat system that works (skills+attributes+perks) instead of removing completely the weak links.

Thrown Weapons, Spears, Spell Creation, Advanced Enchanting and Levitation only if there were limitations. Like no crazy walking around the sky for hours kind of stuff, more like quick escape or reach the top of a building type levitation.

Even higher than Attributes (Which I agree with Bethesda, were functionally pointless, but added another layer of depth), is item variety. There just isn't a whole lot of interesting things to collect after Morrowind, which maybe set an unreasonably high bar. Broadswords, Sabers, Katanas, Shortsword, Spears, Shortbows, Throwing weapons... All these added a lot more variety and less repetition to encounters in the game. I guess this is the same argument for and against as Attributes. Functionally, a Broadsword may not be different enough from a Longsword, but it's still something interesting to see which spices the experience and prevents oversaturation.

Attributes are definitely second though. People spend a lot of time with their characters, and every layer you remove, no matter how "Justified" is taking away from that. Attributes also helped differentiate a lot of the races on more than just an aesthetic level.

Finally, but certainly not least, is the cleverly ambiguous writing of Morrowind. It did well by leaving the door open for players to interpret their character's motivations, instead of railroading you into a specific mentality as in Skyrim.

Out of all the things that were in previous Bethesda titles, two things stick out to me in particular:

Weapons and Armor Degradation: While I don't think that a straight copy from Oblivion should have been done, I don't think that degradation should have been entirely thrown out either. I like the idea of a threshold system, where a Draugr Deathlord would be able to damage a player's equipment but something like a Skeever wouldn't.

Character Classes Linked to Leveling Up: While I can honestly say that I don't miss being the master of everything, I'm not a huge fan of leveling up everything, even if it's not relevant to one's character. The total amount of attribute points and perks gained by level 81 is typically enough for me to create an interesting character, who is heavily invested in 6-7 skills. Trouble is, to get there, I have to master 11-12 skills that I have no interest in for that character. As a result, Skyrim's leveling system has encouraged me to stick to 3-4 skills per character, which makes those characters lower level than they would be otherwise and have as much depth as a puddle.

I am currently playing Morrowind for the first time ever. I feel that this gives me new perspective on Skyrim.

Good in Skyrim (stuff I want to leave in)
- Crafting: makes sense and is rewarding (and personally I feel that it should produce equipment on par with artifacts/unique loot on the highest level). I was sad to see degradation go, but this is an ok replacement.
- Blocking is nice, especially that you do not need a shield.
- Poisons and alchemy (with attributes, this would be even better!)
- Battle is more fun, looks better and is more varied, even though I think there are fewer strategies.
- The amount of detail (most of it uninteresting though)
- Perks (yes, actually)
- Lore/story - nothing amazing, but good enough, better than Oblivion at least.
- Tons of big dungeons with a fair amount of variation, well thought out (a quick exit etc).
- Fast travel (yes, if you remove quest markers I think it would work)


Bad in Skyrim
- Leveled loot and not enough unique stuff. This is a huge downer, takes the fun out of exploring. I did not understand this until I played Morrowind.
- Too few magic effects (why not ADD effects for a new game?)
- Dialogue (I prefer dialogue boxes)
- Quest markers (if they had better dialogues, they could add the option to turn them off, but you don't get enough information to find your target in Skyrim unlike in Morrowind). I had no idea how much these detracted from the game until I played Morrowind. Wow.
- No real factions (since you can do everything in Skyrim, once you have with your first character, there is no reason to replay, in Morrowind you have to play multiple characters to see everything, that is why a lot of people STILL play it).
- Fewer options. There are so many ways to solve quests in Morrowind, it is ridiculous. You feel truly free. Every skill has a use and you can chose if you want to talk or be aggressive. The quests are not solved for you like it is in Skyrim.
- A million tiny details. For example: why is not stuff in houses worth more? Would it not make sense for a thief to be able to steal stuff and use the money to pay for training, rather than risking his life in real battle? This seems completely possible in Morrowind (although I haven't actually done it myself).
- Why not let us equip more armor parts? Or clothes under our armor? And why not more weapons? They do not have to be extremely varied, just make variation of a few basic designs.
- Why not bigger, open, but less detailed cities? That worked great in Morrowind and it still looks great.
- Too simple and tiny fraction quests. Compare Fighting guild with Companions. It is not even funny. And they way that the story is told in a subtle way through the quests in Morrowind... Fantastic (and this is from less than 30 hours of Morrowind compared to 100 hours of Skyrim).


I think that a role playing game must offer the opportunity to role play, to make choices in the world accordingly to a multitude of different personalities (so that the player may choose his own role). Therefore, there must be enough freedom to make these choices and after playing Morrowind I no longer believe that Skyrim offers enough possibilities.

In other words, I do not consider Skyrim an RPG any longer. It is a great action game, but it is not an RPG.

I would go with skills, attributes, advantages-disadvantages. Or, instead of advantages-disadvantages, then good perks-bad perks. As in when you choose a perk, you have to choose two, one good and one bad. Seriously, if all you want is superman, why have character creation at all? It is much more fun to play with a character that has both virtues and flaws. Oh, and reputation as well.

excellent points.

and, the second one is something many fail to even see. they don't like the OPTION, btw, of getting all skills to 100 and being able to do everything, yet, i have to partake of a skill i don't want to in order to level up, lol.

so, many don't want the option to be maxed in everything and get every perk AND with the say skyrim is balanced they don't want the ability to exclusively specialize and still level up.

Wow! I always thought I was alone in feeling this way.

i haven't played daggerfall, yet. (i can't get the damn thing to download)

but, with all these great concepts that you admit daggerfall has, can you, look at skyrim and say they've developed and advanced and gotten creative with these ideas and that skyrim is the culmination of them?

because, i look at morrowind and its great ideas and i see skyrim as completely lacking in the execution of taking those great concepts and applying them.

I have been avoiding threads like this but alas, I shall dive in.

My two cents as a long time Elder scrolls player.

Starting from the beginning. Daggerfall was amazing, but poor production mared many highlights. Some skills were unutilized, HUGE dungeons would make you lost and trapped by over scaled monsters. Static cities that many were identical. Great pen-paper adaptation and I loved it, poor execution and low production values. I would love to see Daggerfall spellmaking in Skyrim.

Morrowind, my second fav, blew my mind when it was released. Very imaginative world, high fantasy execution was great! The pen-paper style was still there with dialog boxes but premade dungeons were used due to the increased graphics and production levels. The variety of weapons and armor was staggering, I would love to see a return of throwing weapons, spears, short swords, and medium armor. Spellmaking as well should find its way into skyrim. Mutually exclusive factions were amazing and geve HIGH replayability.

Oblivion, my third fav, uped production value for immersion purposes but did away with some aspects. Levitation was game breaking in someways and I agree with its absence. Horrible character models however, weird scaling, good difficulty though and I think a more balanced difficulty for master from oblivion into skyrim would be great as oblivion imo had better AI control. The arena was awesome and I would love to see that added into skyrim, shocked it wasn't.

Skyrim is number one in my book and here's why. Compared to morrowind which went for high fantasy with large variety (which I love), Skyrim tried for better immersion with the environment. Skyrim feels more living and breathing then Morrowind or Oblivion ever did with amazing weather, water, and environment. The color scale is superior to the bright greens of oblivion and misty grey of morrowind. It has a very cold, realism to it. The physics are much better, the combat is smoother, and magic works better with more fluidity (morrowinds one spell in one hand svcked for hot keying). The perk system is great and I think it is superior to the other leveling systems as the perk system does add individuality to your builds. BUT, the lack of stats, classes, and birthsigns was silly IMO. These aspects add attachment to my past TES characters and only a hand full of my Skyrim toons gave me that attachment unlike the others. I feel more attachment and involvment in the Skyrim world unlike TES 3 and 4, but better character attachment in TES 3 and 4.

I understand why they did what they did, but they need to expand on lessons learned from the other games as well. Bring back Morrowind weapon and armor variety with more mutually exclusive factions. Bring back the spells and spellmaking from Obilivion. I can live with no classes, but bring back Birthsigns. Last, make the racials more like Morrowinds, where your race REALLY defined how you would play...danty wood elves in morrowind could be Two handed barbarians sure! But to do so should take FOREVER (be a challenge rather). Last, give me Blunt and Blade skills back instead of Twohanded onehanded...Two handed great swords would swing and wield much different then a two handed warhammer. It makes more sense logically.

c-striker

i agree, except, i don't rank the 3 TES games against each other.

i expected skyrim to be exactly what you are describing. and, i don't think that can be considered excessively high expectations, since, i was basing it all on their own past games.

many of the faults i talk about in skyrim are such easy fixes. or, they are design decisions that i don't like: no attributes to govern perks. perks that are uninspired. skills that have been rendered useless or eliminated. the list of things eliminated in skyrim for no good reason is long and meaningful.

You are right, they had to have hit their time limit to just leave out spellmaking, character creation stuff, and lack of stats piss me off. It really does bug me! I miss having to have a good nights rest to level up! I was always so excited to DING time to sleep!

I started playing morrowind again too. Made a Necromancer Breton...without athletics...I forgot how important that skill is in morrowind because it is SOOOOO SLOOOOWWWW. Really, almost unbearable. I may restart.

Unarmed combat.
Spears.
An arena of some type.
A Fighters Guild that isn't based on being a werewolf.

Factions that inter link

Well... I wish for converted mods.
As for actual, original game features, I'd really like underwater combat, and more dialogue options.