Too many crazed bandits, living dead, wild animals, mutated elves, sadistic magicians, devil worshipers, and dragons and not enough normal folks who I can have a conversation with without having a quest forced on me IMO.

I just think it would be more interesting if animals didn't go for the attack right away.

Bears leave you alone if you keep distance, kinda like bandits saying thats close enough. Wolves and sabres are put in Skyrim to hunt your ass down .

I understand the "every npc has a quest for me deal" and i agree with that but i dont think there should really be much more people. Maybe more travelera on the road in order to make you feel like your not the only one using the roads.

I thought Bethesda did a much better job with this in Skyrim than they did in Oblivion. In Oblivion dungeons didn't feel like they were an organic part of the landscape to me. I rarely felt I was in the middle of nowhere in Cyrodiil. I could almost envision a memo arriving from the front office, specifying: "One dungeon per exterior cell, no two of the same type of dungeon right next to each other." It felt mechanical and contrived to me: one Ayleid ruin, one cave, one mine, one fort and then it was time to cycle through the dungeon types again: one Ayleid ruin, one cave, one mine, one fort.

In Skyrim I find myself looking around now and then and wondering where the dungeons are. I find myself thinking, 'Wow, I'm really out in the middle of nowhere here. There's nothing around me in any direction. I haven't even seen a wolf for the last ten minutes.' The placement of dungeons in Skyrim feels as natural to me as the dungeons in Morrowind felt. I consider that to be high praise.

I think the landscape of Skyrim is very well suited for natural dungeons such as caves and they are integrated with stunning artwork. The forts and barrows of ancient Nords also provide excellent dungeons that are completely natural to the overall feel (though there are too many forts IMO). At any rate, Cyrodill is a very bland landscape in and of itself and maybe that's why the dungeons felt mechanical and bland too. I would love a Skyrim-graphics reworking of Cyrodill though, just for the cities (the Imperial City could be made simply stunning now), maybe they could have less dungeons and find a way to integrate them more. That said, I'd much rather have a province like Elysweyr, or High Rock be the subject of the next installment in the series. That reminds me of an awesome Skyrim mod where a guy is actually making Black Marsh. The project is still in it's early stages so there's two deserted towns, a few locations and two populated forts, though the only characters that have more than basic interactions are vendors.

I think that's somewhat misrepresenting the positions in quesiton. One is a complaint regarding city size and friendly population (cities are too small with too few people). The other is a complaint regarding world size and enemy population (the world is too small and there are two many enemies). The second complaint would largely be alleviated simply by increasing the landmass between cities. Enemies and dungeons are spread thinner, leaving things less claustrophobic.

The side effect is that horses are now a generally worthwhile investment. Tedium is offset by the availability of fast travel.
The difference is bandits usually have little camps off under an outcropping or something. A bear's nesting ground seems to be the actual road itself. So to avoid a bear, you actually have to go further into the wilderness.

I will say, in Oblivion I enjoyed walking from town to town on foot. This activity is harder to do in Skyrim without having a dragon around every corner.

I like it. I think they would've liked it more spread out, but when you are hand crafting every single inch of land, you don't really have the time to do all that extra in-between without making it bland and generic. Giving an area a handmade unique look is really tough and time consuming.

I disagree with bears and sabres being randomly spawned on the roads but your right. If a bear is on the road it will attack on sight basically. I meant bears guarding caves really. They just want you to stay away like bandits.

IMO bears and sabres should stay in the wild but thats a spawning issue. Wolves I feel would look to the roads.

Regardless, I feel a spawn should be a flip of a coin to see if a random event should happen or not. That way traveling can be lonely like it may very well be in a realiatic sense. A random event doesnt HAVE to happen every cell shift.