I'm a huge supported of Beth and the community of players for their games. Although Beth doesn't have the cleanest track records, their games are enjoyable and they are a nice bunch of people and I feel are one of the few old school studios remaining that really just enjoy making games. However...

I feel like everything they do is conservative, except for environments. Skyrim's environment is amazing in detail. But everything else is just somewhat lacking.

Combat: I wish they would focus on variability in combat. Yeah, they can always work on the collision of strikes, making weapons feel weighty, but after releases like Dragon's Dogma, they need to increase the options. I don't mean combo oriented melee though. We need to have button configurations and cooperative perks (if they keep perks for later enstallments) that would allow an archer to nock two arrows. A swordsman needs to be able to do more than just swing his blade and see the same animations over and over.

Magic: I'm not going to comment on the removal of spell making. Instead, I want to focus on the current system. The benefit of removing spell making is more varied animations and effects for spells. So why are Firebolt and Incinerate the same thing? Firestorm is just a bigger fireball. Ice Spear is a bigger Ice Spike. I feel like they need to look at all sorts of magic systems available and see the type of abilities that have come from it. As an amateur MTG player, my preferred style of play is deck milling through mind wipe cards. That would fit amazingly into the alteration school. If you don't want to go down Illusion, but want an invisibility like spell, you get a spell that wipes the minds of the people around you so they forget you're their. It would be channelled. Or you can use it in combat and you erase NPC skills from their mind. For example, another mage may be pelting you with high level spells and so you mind wipe their destruction skill and now they can't caste that spell anymore.

Stealth: I actually don't mind the stealth system in Skyrim. Some of the perks really are nice. But there is always more. Mix stealth and magic for a Shadow Archer and your character can become someones shadow, even teleporting between visible shadows for better placement. Think about this in a bandit cave. You are trying to get a shot on a foe but he moves behind a rock and you can't see him. You spot a shadow nearby, activate the spell which shows you disappearing and then forming out of the shadow like black smoke, and now you have a shot lined up.

Freedom of movement: We are way too limited. Why can't I sprint and jump? I just watched in amazing Flying Mod for Skyrim. Why can't this be a higher level skill to learn, that drains magicka? Why couldn't the VL fly just by pointing my reticule up and watching him take off? Rock climbing would have been another visceral experience. Instead of of jumping up mountains, it would have been neat to see, in first person, your arms out in front of you. As you climb, you have to find secure places which you would know by a rumbling, like lock picking. I think it would be fun to play a hunter character, climbing up steep rocks for vantage points and looking around while clinging to a rock face for great views of the landscape.

Unique abilities: Most of these that I can think of are magic related, as I primarily am a mage. Anyways, I feel like other characters always have awesome abilities and my characters are just meh. I'm still slinging fireballs or shooting a single arrow or hacking away with my axe. Meanwhile, Malkoran (is that his name) rises from the dead as a shade after you strike him. Why can't I learn to do that? I know Lichdom is a transformation that has been asked for since Morrowind. The only reason why I plan on playing Guild Wars 2 (I hate mmo's) is for the very ability to die as a necromancer and rise in a Death Shroud. In LOTR, Legolas stabs a guy with an arrow before shooting it. Why can't I do that? For button configuration, it's easy. Pull the right trigger (I play 360 now as my pc is way out of date), stab with arrow. Pull with left trigger, you smack with the bow (as blocking really doesn't make sense), pull them both and you nock the arrow. Why can't my orc throw one of the his war axes? Or more likely a smaller throwing axe? Why can't my assassin throw knives? Why can't my assassin graple someone and drag them into the darkness before killing them?

NPC Interaction: Serana is a good step in the right direction for NPC's and Followers but the menu interface and the way everyone just stands around waiting for you to do something makes it seem hollow. Give these people personalities. Why does every citizen charge into battle? Why aren't some more sly? Others cowardly? Why does everything seem to hinge on my character acting first before others react? Why can't I ever react?

Changing environments: We've seen seasonal change in the game jam video. This is something I was hearing about during the Oblivion days. Add this. Also, another fan favorite was building the Raven Rock colony. Let's see more of this (I'll get back to this.)

Factions: Skyrim's factions are terrible and they only slightly got better with the Dawngaurd and Vampires. The stories seem drab, progression is too quick, characters are hollow, motivation to finish storyline usually non-existent (you do quests because you need to advance, not because you actually want to). I have an idea for future DLC for Skyrim that I just call Faction Expansion. It extends the stories and capabilities of each faction. For Companions, the secret of being werewolves gets out. Driven from Whiterun, you lead the companions across Skyrim in a Moses Exodus deal, trying to find a place to belong and really focusing on character relationships with your companions. You eventually start your own town as a safe haven for werewolves. You recruit citizens, telling them you can cure them or teach them control and give them a place to leave. Long story short, you develop a new city and hold in skyrim, ruled by the Companions. For the College, you choose to puruse the Psijic Order, going through multiple rituals, traversing Oblivion planes, until you find them. There you learn unique magic, like how to fly and stop time and spectral walk (let's you fight briefly as an unkillable ghost but you must protect your body) and when you return to the college, as the arch mage, you finish the earlier catastrophe by ripping the college out of existence, into a new plane where the students can study magic indefinitely without hurting Winterhold anymore. You can open a portal to the college whenever and adopt more students, teach classes if you want, take on an apprentice, and more. Those are just two examples of extending the factions.

I feel like Bethesda needs to write down all their ideas and then throw them out and start again. The elder scrolls series has potential to offer some of the most adaptive, altering gameplay experiences for people, if they were just willing to tap into variety.

your idea about the stealth spell sounds absolutely awesome. this is exactly what i picture a dark mage/assasin character doing. Teleporting from shadow to shadow.... SICK!!

You should seriously go to Midas with that idea on the mod forum, and see if he would support adding that to his magic mod.

Actually, damn near all your ideas are awesome. Rock climbing? DOPE!

I don't know if you are on PC, but i think not. anyways, you have ideas that could pull some serious attention in the modding community, and you should get into it if you're interested. these kind of ideas don't just "come" to anyone....

I bet the only reason they aren't in the game is because they weren't thought of, or, that they had a deadline to meet ($$$>Perfection)

If the publisher doesn't like it they wont use it. simple as that. Bethesda may not have any chance to say anything about it in the end

I think the problem is that there is too much reliance on the mod community to flesh out and fix the game and add things that should be there in the first place.

Bethesda Softworks is both the developer and the publisher.

Even with the exclusives(like dawnguard) if games like Fallout & TES will continue/be half assed and relay on mods they will lose alot of console players.

Oh so this is how you get a topic about changes and additions you'd like to see without getting it locked and pointed to the TES VI thread.... simply don't mention TES VI anywhere.

That's exactly why I'm not putting stuff in the mods section. I want to see Bethesda do these things and release a vanilla game that makes people go "I enjoy it without mods.". I look at mods and I wonder, these are people doing this in their free time. Beth is paid to make games. Why is it that certain people ALWAYS seem to do it better?

I'm not talking so much about changes and additions but more a curious statement why Bethesda doesn't seem to try to do these in the first place. What's holding them back? Do they need to change staff members, to get people who know the games well but aren't tired out with development?

I'm biased, and I'll say that right off the bat. I prefer PC.

BUT, I think that the mod community makes our games a lot better, whether we're on console or PC. Bethesda actively monitors the modding community, and so things that become popular in mods will influence bethesda's developing decisions down the road.

Besides, how can you expect every thing that YOU want to be in a deadlined game? It's not like developers, ANY developer, has an indefinite amount of time to build each game. there are deadlines, quotas, ROI concerns, personell capabilities, etc. i don't think they "rely" on the mod community at all. they give us the capability to mod because they know that there will undoubtedly be things that some people want in the future, as well as simple mechanics improvements that they couldn't have caught/fixed in their time-frame.

In any case, Beth actively learns frmo mods. So it is still a blessing, not a curse to consoles.

Well, video games, like movies, are a collaborative art. Bethesda is a company (actually headquartered not too far from where I live) and they have corporate overseers and stockholders that they have to answer to. Just like everyone wants to make a sucessful movie, everyone wants to make a successful video game.

But what a successful video game means to a stockholder, to a senior vice president, to the lead developer, and to the guy who is designing one of the dungeons characters will go into are different things.

For example, its possible some designer had the dea to have huge, sprawling dungeons with multiple entrances and exits, multiple pathways and a complex story tied to it, like some people on the boards here cry for, and someone higher up said "Hey bro, people tend to play games in small size chunks of time these days, and want a simpler experience, so make it simple." And the designer had to listen.

Then there are things like cloaks and more robes and things they wanted to add but simply ran out of time, because somebody in marketing (who probably thinks they are a genius) thought that releasing the game on 11-11-11 would somehow increase sales.

With mods, its most likely one person doing the work. I don't know, I've never made a game mod, but I'm assuming its usually one creative programmer. That means there's no approval process, or test market, or corporate jumprope to go through. That also means there are anime girls with lightsabres and with briasts bigger then their head turning around and farting to do their shouts in skyrim. (yes those are all mods)

The mods do make the games better. However, for me, I don't like the idea of mods because I feel like I'm no longer playing in the Elder Scrolls universe. I feel like I cheated. It's weird. And I don't like PC controls. So I guess it's a matter of preference.

As for the time contraints and not getting what I want, these aren't things that just I want. Others have wanted similar things for years, even before I joined the forums 7 years ago. Some of these are things that are still missing and so in Skyrim, come across as uninspired. And the gameplay mechanics of skyrim really are uninspired. There is little I can do in this game that I can't do elsewhere, other than hike the land scape. They have that down. We get it. The Elder Scrolls series offers a large, detailed landscape to run around and play in. The other aspects of gameplay need to catch up now.

I've seen those. I don't think all mods are great additions haha. And I get the business structure. I deal with it everyday at work. And I didn't limit my criticism to just the developers. It's the entire process.

I enjoy Skyrim without mods. Not to say I wouldn't enjoy it more with them, but the assertion that the game is not enjoyable on its own is absurd.

You have some cool suggestions in your list, but I don't think the absence of any of these items is a sign of "conservatism" on the part of Bethesda. It's Bethesda's lack of conservatism (losing spellmaking, losing attributes, etc.) that seems to get it in the most trouble among the members of this forum. But of course, all devoted fanbases want everything to be improved, but nothing to be changed.

While I don't necessarily disagree or think you are wrong with that statement, at the same time, if popular mods are really going to influence the development of TES games, why in the world do we still get crappy UI? Look at SkyUI and the one before it, they were pretty much the most popular mods of all time for a TES game, yet we are still getting crappy UI. So, while what you say might be true, it doesn't really seem so.

Hey, I enjoy Skyrim without mods. What I would like to see is people not instantly having to download mods to make the game "better" as is common practice among some PC players. The necessity should be diminished or eliminated.

I would argue those acts are conservative. Spell making too "spreadsheety" as Todd said so they axe it. Attributes supposedly have no meaning, so they axe it. By conservatism, I mean only working with the basics. Spell-making can be very difficult to learn for beginners and to program properly. So basic spells instead. Computing attributes can be difficult to learn, so simple health, magic, stamina. In my eyes, not be conservative would be leaving spell-making in and allowing us to tweak the form it takes (so fire effect can be channeled, launched like a bolt, ball, multiple fireballs, transform into some fire spirit, however fantasy you want). Mixing spell effects would be non-conservative but again, were are only allowed to dual cast the same spell.

Sure modders can make the game better, but could they make the game from scratch. I think not. Sure I can build something cool with Legos, but I can't create the Legos themselves. It's easy to make something when most of the hard work has been done for you.