What do you think the next Elder Scroll game should change?

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From your avatar I never would have seen that coming.

I think the elder scrolls series should stop over-simplifying their new games.

The new elder scrolls games have a habit of improving combat mechanics and graphics, but reducing the number of skills and things related to those skills.

For example, since Morrowind, many skill types, spells, and weapons were removed when Oblivion was released, and Skyrim reduced the amount of abilities left to each skill.

Where Morrowind had too many spells to count making magic interesting, Skrim is far too basic... making it wasteful to build a magic skill tree for so few select spells attached to that tree.

Or enchantment, in Morrowind, you could enchant almost any spell into an item, where as Skyrim reduces the ammount of enchants drastically. I felt the enchant skill tree in Skyrim was great, and that the system was the best in the series, until I found out that the enchants were so few and wasteful... making me regret filling so many skill points into the tree.

Same goes for alchemy in Skyrim... nice tree, but there aren't enough ingredients or available effects to get creative.

I basically would like the next elder scrolls game to bring back the variety of weapons, skills, enchants, alchemy effects, etc. that were in Morrowind, but of course keep what was better up to Skyrim like the fighting mechanics, visuals, skill development, and character interaction.

Also, I would like if the weapons weren't level based . It's fairly annoying to know that weapons are just going to decrease in quality when you level up. I see this new leveled system by Bethesda as lazy. Morrowind had it right when each weapon had strengths and weaknesses... and the ones that were superior were harder to receive.

Make the Combat more lifelike and less robotic, like with Dark Souls styled combat, where a swing of your shield could stun the enemy, and make for a brutal takedown. Etc.

Make it Kinect usable to where you swing with your fists you character swings, etc.

Bigger more dynamic choices with multiple endings which truly have an effect on Nirn/Tamriel.

Riding Dragons

Elseweyr?

Food, Sleep and water requirements to survive day to day.

Temperature sensitivity. For example, in Skyrim you can go nude straight to Dawnstar and your character won't flinch from the cold but in real life your toes with go black from frostbite.

I remember my first time playing Skyrim, I was standing at a raging river.
I looked to my brother and said, "I'm scared".
"Looks dangerous" he replied... I said "No, I'm scared that my character will have no danger of drowning when I jump in"

My worst fears were confirmed.

I just had a humbling reminder that for all the criticisms we're heaping on Skyrim, the mod's give it a whole other layer that could be more than make or break.

This is probably the best case I've ever seen for why the mods make Skyrim all worth the while:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bifmj1O3D24[/youtube]

Tell me that's not epic!

1. Level scaling, get rid of it.
2. bring back the elder scrolls 3 magic system, it was way better.
3. varied quests based on whats you have already done, and some sort of morality system. There is something wrong with the world when ive pledged my soul to several daedric princes.
4. Longer main quest with more epic themes. Skyrim's main quest was a let down. I still liked it, but I beat it in three hours once I decided to do it.
5. A reason to actually transform into a werewolf. they kinda suck.

One word. There is one thing they can fix. NO MORE FUC*ING ARROW IN THE KNEE CRAP! I'm sick of it.

Reading some replies here and and a lot have a common theme. Anyway as game design is a big interest I can hopefully try and answer some things.

1) The game taking place is a smaller area, Skyrim specifically, was a design decision. Same as with Oblivion and Morrowind. In TES 1 and 2 they did have the whole map of all lands. Problem is more land = more time saving done. As in all dungeons in Skyrim are hand made. Now imagine how long it would take to hand make *every* dungeon in 20+ zones the size of Skyrim. It is not practical, you either make a random random dungeon generator like in TES 1 and 2 or use a much smaller map and do that.

2) Simplified controls are again a design choice. This is a problem with consoles. Consoles have very limited input, where a keyboard and mouse are very powerful input devices. So either make nice console controls and port this simplified system to PC, or use good PC controls and butcher them when porting to console. I would say the controls in Skyrim were vastly better than Oblivion but a big problem was dual wielding (anything, 2 spells, weapons, weapon and shield). If was very awkward sometimes when trying to get something into a specific hand.

3) Simplified mechanics was an evolution of the TES stats system. The whole idea of the skills was that the more you do it the better you get. In Oblivion the repair skill is a good example. It was hard to get it high. One method to raise it was to repair after *every* battle but that becomes tedious. Also carefully balancing skill gains to get optimum stat boosts on level ups was just painful. In Skyrim a lot of the tedious aspects were removed. In Skyrim it really feels like you get better as you use abilities and there is very little of the feeling you need to do tedious things to proceed. Even high level smithing isn't that bad.

4) Hypothermia- I noticed this too. There is no way you could walk through an iced up lake. I was expecting heavy damage but nope, waltz through naked and you feel fine. Just adding to this there is the cooking. Perhaps there could have been a "hard" mode like in New Vegas. Adding a "food" bar and "warmth" bar that required you to eat and stay warm respectively, would have been nice.

5) Simple combat is mostly for the console crowd I think. It was challenging in a sense, but it is definitely not punishing. Again a hard mode that made combat tougher would have been nice. However 15 year olds can whine really loudly and they would whine very loud of combat was too hard. A lot of console gamers are 15, or act like 15 year olds so combat is something Bethesda tuned very carefully.

Lastly this "over-simplification" of games is happening in every genre. As games become more mainstream more people that are less apt at gaming play them. World of Warcraft is a great example. It is very clear it has been made easier. You could list a lot of changes and additions they did which cater to younger/less patient/less apt gamers. The future expansion pack makes this very obvious. I don't like it and hell I better stop because I could write an essay on that