What I would like is something set in a single, large, living, breathing city on the coast, whose name and location is unknown, but within in the empire, teaming with people. From the slums to the rich quarter, the markets and the docks, and the sewers that runs under the city, I want a city that feels ALIVE. Outside the city gates is the country side, with a few towns, dungeons and the like, but everything is central to the city.

I want to be dumped out on my arse without a clue of what to do in a place that seeks to kill me at every turn. To accept a delivery for a few coins from one side of the city to another, only to find I've been set up as the guy who hired me cry's 'Theif!' To join with some mercenaries and escort a caravan through a dangerous portion of the country side, then be cheated by my employer. To end up owing money to the wrong people, and having to pay it back. Be forced to fight as a gladiator to earn your freedom when convicted. Try to join with a guild for the fringe benefits. Accept a job from a stranger to kill the man who was sleeping with his wife, and get involved with more than you bbargined for.
I want a place that gives the player a rich world, that offers the illusion of freedom of choice, because the player doesn't have a choice in what they do, as they do what they must to survive. I stress illusion as true freedom of choice is far to hard to achive and still be fun, with the illusion the developers can keep a strong hold on the story.
Once the player gets past surviving and is well set up, is when they get dumped with a main story line quest, to save the world... or let it burn as they ignore it and follow their own petty desires.

I really like Rogue's idea of twisted storylines and deception. Oblivion was far too cut and dried in that respect, especially when working for the Dark Brotherhood:

If you end up on the wrong side of the law, or a faction, you should be at least dipped in the cacky, if not up to your eyeballs in the steaming brown. Say, you get framed for a crime, you can go about clearing your name (or not) in different ways, gathering evidence, framing some other sucker, or buying your way out of it via corrupt individuals.

That's quite a point, actually, what other factions would we want to see in TES:V?

Personally, I'd like to see being able to join a law enforcement faction, bounty hunters, or city guards, hell, we could bring back the Imperial Legion of Morrowind. That way, there's always the potential to have a limitless supply of randomly generated quests, solving murders, thefts, tracking down fugitives.

On the flipside of the coin, how about working with a bandit group? Okay, we have theieves and assassins, but what if we want to break the law in a less subtle manner? Thus, we can delve into inter-bandit skirmishes, establishing new bases in infested ruins and caves, raiding small villages, the whole range of badassery in the name of profit and murder.

I'd also like to expand on what I said before on the combat system:

Blade:

Fencing: Make the most of the length of your blade, improving the speed and making it harder to block, but sacrificing damage and your own defence.

Blade-Kata: Discipline and technique, enhancing damage and defence at the cost of speed and flexibility.

Blunt:

Subdue: Not everyone just wants to crack some skulls. Used carefully, a club, cosh or mace can render someone unconscious without serious damage. Useful for Thieves looking to score some quick cash.

Follow Through: Utilising the momentum and stopping power of a cudgel, at the expense of fatigue, attacks that break someone's guard keep on coming until the attacker stops, or the defencer successfully evades them.

Hand-To-Hand:

Vital Attacks: As opposed to standard power attack effects, the flexibility of hand-to-hand aloows the fighter to burden, silence, paralyse, knock down, enrage or demoralise opponents without the use of magic.

Combat Styles: Brawling, for extra damage, martial arts for speed, dirty fighting for emphasis on attack effects, etc.

Other Stuff:

Throwing: Small to medium-sized weapons could be throwable, either as a desperation move against a fleeing opponent, or as an alternative to an assassin's bow. Chucking a dagger, axe, or even a shortsword is perfectly possible with skill, and rather powerful.

Coup De Grace: When you've knocked an enemy to the floor, or drained their health sufficiently (a la Deadly Reflex), why can't we finish them off with a well-placed sword-thrust or hammer blow? It seems a bit redundant that we can only slash at them when they're down, not jam a blade into their eye socket.

Two-Weapon Fighting: Within reason, limited to small and medium weapons, or one long and one medium or less. It just beggars belief that no-one in TES seems to have grasped that you can hold a weapon in your other hand, too.

i actually had a great idea for a character class which did not work out as well as i planned in oblivion, i created a mage who focused mostly on mage skills but i also gave him hand to hand, hoping i might be able to do a "paralyze on touch for x amount of seconds" and turn my fists into firey doom hands or electric mayhem, being able to paralyze people with a punch or some of the other magic spells imbued in your gauntlets maybe. i dunno just the concept of a mage/monk who used his spells to enhance the hand to hand seemed like fun, i had aspirations of leaving smoldering knuckle marks on mehrunes dagon's underlings. all i can say is thank god i also put blade as a major skill in case it didn't work out because it didn't work out so well.

i also will say i'm not a fan of the fact that ice didn't damage half the enemies in oblivion, anything undead was immune to ise attacks, which was alot of stuff, that could go away as well.

Lots of neat ideas here, people. Good work.

A few things I'll mention.

I love the idea of a big living city. Kind of like Assassin's Creed's cities, but with things that are fun to do. My only concern here is that a mostly city-based game would really change the flavour of TES. It's a lot harder to have huge cave/ruin/dungeon complexes in a city. "Get thee to the baker, inside will be a trap door that leads to an ancient ruin with many horrible daemons." Planescape: Torment pulled off the big city well, but then that whole game was pretty twisted.

Make characters that are attractive or at least give us that option. Seriously, no one in Cyrodill would ever get laid looking like that.

Make a cool world, whatever it is. Morrowind blew me away. Huge sandstorms, stilt-striders, slave plantations, Dwemer huts with the neat, wood wind-chimes. The game was dripping with atmosphere. Oblivion felt so ordinary by comparison.

I think a huge, cosmopolitan city would be neat. Rather than Chinatown, Little Italy, and the French Quarter, have Khajittown, Little Dwemerville, and the Elf Quarter. The city should feel like it has been built up by different cultures over hundreds of years, like in real life.

it may be just a small thing but wouldnt it be nice to have some effects of drugs(and more drugs added at that)and not just be dezesed and take a potion and walk away i want a hospital you know maybe a nice nurse that sais you have to take this twice a day for 2 weeks or youl be in a lot of pain and eventualy die
also what would be awesome is the ability to lose an arm for instance or maybe at least get scars just more interaction with yourself you know not just everyone else

My idea is that it could be set shortly after Oblivion finished, the Empire is disintegrating and the other races are declaring their independence and trying to establish themselves.
All the provinces would be present and accessible, Cyrodiil, Hammerfell, High Rock, Skyrim, Morrowind, Black Marsh, Elsewyr, Valenwood and Summerset Isle. Whatever race that you pick would decide where you start, for instance if you select Bosmer you would begin in Valenwood. You are probably thinking that you are tied into a quest line that is fighting for your nation's establishment but this is where it gets interesting. You would be able to 'turn traitor,' to work for the Imperials holding together the Empire or work for any of the other provinces. A Nord could become an Imperial spy in Skyrim or go to Morrowind and help the Dark Elves or Black Marsh or any of the provinces. There would be very open-ended quests and many factions.
In each province there would be a main city, that was vibrant and full of life and bigger than the Imperial City as well as many smaller towns sized like the ones in Oblivion. Each character in each city and town should have a backstory and their own agendas that you could work to fulfill.
In short I don't really agree with the 'big city' idea because I think that would be departing from TES storyline and wouldn't capture the largeness and diversity of Tamriel. I am more in favour of a game like Oblivion but much bigger, with many different factions that have ambitions and wants and a huge world to explore with all the provinces.

I think to make it better have the game set in one fucking big city. off the Charts big.

Have the main quest revolve around a war between factions.

However instead of letting us go in as many factions as we like keep the player limited to only one faction. We choose what faction we would liek to join early in the game. Throught out the game we level up our stats and also climb the ranking in that faction. At the end of the game the factions will be at war, you have to try and make your faction win.

To win you can destroy an enemy faction, hire assassins (you could be in an assassin guild and work for other factions hmm) to take down leaders, defend your leader, engage in gang activities such as vandalising enemy faction land or just plain out fight them.

The actions you can take will depend on the faction you choose, for instance a fighters guild will not hire assassins.

Actually screw TES, this could be a good game all on its own.

I think, less Elf, More Nord, Everyone knows that Morrowind was a hit and when they introduced blood moon I practicaly came in my pants! Werewolves, Proud Nordes, And the quests ACTUALY made sense! It was like someone was beating me with a happy stick and then got tired of the little happy that came from it, so they switched to a happy war-mace (The one found on solsthiem in particularly)

And make players faster when they start, on morrowind, it took me 20 minutes when I started to get to Balmora on foot! Too slow.

And, instead, when your on a mass murder, if you come peacefully you will be scheduled to be executed, in which you will be jailed over night, giving you the opertuniy to pull a lockpick out of your arse and get away and if you lay low for about 3 weeks the hit eventualy goes down and then once it hits zero, your a free man. But if they see the escaped lunatic they will kill him if the hit is still on! (MORE VIGILANTIES TOO!!!)

Oh and more street brawling....

Bring back Cliff Racers. JUST KIDDING PLEASE DON'T SHOOT ME.

In all seriousness, I agree with the bigger cities, varied voice acting, actually having an epic battle if they tell you it will be epic. No more 12 vs 12 (though that was pretty large for oblivion) If possible, don't make cities separate cells. I want levitation/flying! For the love of God, when you make an ending quest series, please do not make us do the same thing OVER AND OVER. I had to close six or seven oblivion gates, then go close ANOTHER ONE in the aforementioned "epic battle". Seriously people. More quests like the painting mystery. That was amazing.

Oh yeah, let us kill anyone we want. So what if it ends everything right there? We want them DEAD, not unconscious, simply to rise soon in a sunny disposition. I also liked the shops in Morrowind more. You could just walk in and take everything they had if you had a good enough sneak skill. Needless to say, it would have to be much MUCH harder - nigh-impossible - to rob the super rich stores. They all have lists of items for sale. Where do they keep them? I want to have a heist. Pay off homeless to distract guards, scale the back of the building, all that fun stuff. Easily movable bodies that you could hide in trunks and wardrobes and the like.

No more psychic guards/enemies. Their companion was just shot with an arrow, at night, by me wearing a black cloak, from a rooftop. They instantly know who I am and where I am. Seriously, I want some masks or face covering hoods, and some in-combat stealth escapes. Go quiet, sneak across rooftops, scale the city walls, silently kill the wall guard, scale down outside to freedom. However difficult it may be, it would be SO much better than Oblivions Shoot-n-run system.

Krazyraw:

However, my dream for TES would be for them to take the Legend of Drizzt books, and kind of create a world much like Menzoberranzan, for those who know what im talking about. I believe just there would be a huge number of different possibilities. Also, maybe making an mmorpg would not be such a bad idea with this idea because of the wide variety of things one can do. And in order to do such a task fully you WOULD DEFINETLY NEED TO CHANGE THE FIGHTING ENGINE TO BE MORE REALISTIC WITH INTRICATE FIGHTING SYSTEMS. Email with any questions or comments: tnb2tnt@aim.com

Two problems isn't menzoberranzan:
1. Totally dark
2. Fully controlled by matriarchs

I've not read all the suggestions, so excuse me and credits to those who have already posted the same ideas as me... but here goes.

First of all, using a next gen engine is all good and the visual effects are important, but scaleability is the key. Scaleability means that anyone and their dog whether it be an old computer, new computer, or console can play.

Use of an up-to-date physics engine (such as Euphoria/Endorphin) would make for realistic movement and interaction.

Multiplayer support. NOT MMORPG! Multiplayer does not always mean MMO, but have some support for online play so that you can hook up with a couple of friends and perhaps even run your own server that creates a persistent world kind of setting. Look at Neverwinter Nights (original, plus Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark expansion) for an example of community longevity. I've played NWN since it was released, and still continue to do so as there are numerous communities still running on a regular basis. The game has continued to be popular for so long because of community input. Screw MMOs, you just need a decent toolset and some custom multiplayer support and you're laughing.

Campaigns that don't have so much of the 'in between' running around and more city environments. I liked the exploration of TES games, but imo this was distracting in Morrowind. In fact, I've played about 300-400 hrs total on morrowind and have only done the first part of the story. :|

Formation of your own Guilds wouldn't go amiss. Sure, you can take over other guilds in the game, but if you could create/build your own and recruit some NPCs along the way this wouldn't be an unwelcome addition.

Krazyraw:
Also, on a different note, make a world that makes you truly feel the weight of your actions., and make the world you live in react to you and not just vice versa.

I like this idea, but a fair amount of work will need to go into that. I don't have enough space to elaborate on that though otherwise this post would be endless.

Also, Krazyraw's suggestion of a decent combat system that requires the player to be on the ball and act/react quickly to an opponent's moves. One other suggestion I'd like to add to this is to do away with the level up system as I found this made the game easy mode after a while and also meant that combat was stale as mentioned by Krazyraw. If you have an intuitive combat system then a need for leveling would be obsolete and would require skill to fight anything from a hobo to the biggest boss in the game or whatever.

For ideas of combat systems, Condemned 2 has a decent combat system that feels like you're really slogging a hobo round the face.

The biggest idea I want to stress again is the community part though. Seriously, a good engine toolset and multiplayer support and a game has the potential to last a long while.

Sorry for rambling a bit... :(

dade-:
Campaigns that don't have so much of the 'in between' running around and more city environments. I liked the exploration of TES games, but imo this was distracting in Morrowind. In fact, I've played about 300-400 hrs total on morrowind and have only done the first part of the story. :|

I've been playing since it was released and still haven't finished it!

I am a massive Elder Scrolls fan, but to be honest I wouldn't be sad if Bethesda called it a day now. The games, particularly Morrowind are now in the hands of the community, which is doing things with the game that I would never have dreamed of. The graphics are looking so much slinkier, the cities are filled with randomly spawning NPCs and kids, sound effects have been overhauled. As well as huge new landmasses, people are writing unique dialogue for each NPC!

Unless they can pull something as awesome as Morrowind out of the bag, I'd say give it a rest. (But I must say I do like the idea of basing it in Elswyer or Summerset Isle, even if the former smacks a little of Assassin's Creed)

I am interested in knowing why everybody thinks that the game should be set in Elsewyr? What makes it so much better than all the other provinces?

interesting bandits

instead of 'Bandit clan X in Cave Y'

why not a cool system of bandit wars, like 3 rival bandit factions that invade other caves, pimp them out, repopulate the caves you bash your way through, and perhaps you can join one?

i just hate the idea of; Ok, cave dead, next cave dead, next cave dead... no more caves (you get what i mean), but a sweet little territory control thing would be nice, like goblin clans raiding to get their staffs back

more goblin raids, its funny.

More Mai'q the liar, not just an opinionated little sprinter, lets have more hidden secrets (dude can that cat run)

Bigger cities, and i mean big, even if half the map is one big city, that would rule

A boost to the Hand-to-Handers, i should be able to neck-snap the unsuspecting dammit! (can you tell my custom class is called 'ninja?')

Throwing stars, bring back thrown weapons, and blow darts while your at it, hell, give me Nunchucks or give me death!

Bigger orcs, not just green humans, when i bellow in rage i want a birds eye view of that wood elf crapping his pants, and more stupidly sized war-hammers, think the witch kings morning-star from LOTR

Morning stars.

Werewolves, being a vampire is pointless when half your day is spent sleeping and slinking, the game is not helpful to those who must lurk.

Necromancy as a magic discipline, i don't care if it gets me banned from the mages guild, ill kill then raise their asses. Let me summon a minion as a permanent companion, make me have to permanently sacrifice max-health or MP to do it, thats fine, make me every guards bitch, thats fine, but let me cackle as i join with my necromantic brothers (new guild is must) and burn the mages guild to the ground, AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... unholy damage spells, corpse raising, a little conjuration, a little soul binding, a little mind control...

my ideas-gut is churning

... i'm off to make a necromancer custom class on Oblivion and morrowind, its not the joy of a dedicated spellset, but damn can i try!

Well, I thought I'd add another few points to the discussion.

Am I the only person who doesn't like the idea of one giant city? I'm sure it could make a good game, but that game wouldn't be the Elder Scrolls.

Whoever came up with the archipelago idea is on the right track. As much as we would like for bethesda to create tamriel in its entirety, we have to remember that developers have things called budgets and time limits. Even today, mapping out an entire continent in detail just isn't realistic.

An archipelago of islands would give you a lot of land to explore, and I think it would be a more realistic option for the developers. On a couple of islands, you have some large capital cities. Quite a few more have villages and outposts. On a lot more, you have monsters roaming about and caves and dungeons to explore. Think back to The Odyssey, and all the adventures Odysseus got up to while trying to make his way home. Now transplant that to a videogame setting. There'd be that sense of exploration that is integral to TES, and which I don't think a city could give.

j-e-f-f-e-r-s:

An archipelago of islands would give you a lot of land to explore, and I think it would be a more realistic option for the developers. On a couple of islands, you have some large capital cities. Quite a few more have villages and outposts. On a lot more, you have monsters roaming about and caves and dungeons to explore. Think back to The Odyssey, and all the adventures Odysseus got up to while trying to make his way home. Now transplant that to a videogame setting. There'd be that sense of exploration that is integral to TES, and which I don't think a city could give.

Island could be great. On top of ship transportation (a la morrowind or other), it would be awesome to be able to buy your own boat and pilot it. Anything from small dinghies to full on merchant/naval vessels, either through quests (imperial navy? pirates? merchants? mermen? fishermen? or by purchase. I think naval combat might be a little too difficult to pull off well, especially if ships can sink and leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere, but being able to be on MOVING ships would be great... you could do some scripted ocean battles though,

New and fresh? Hmm.... A lot of my ideas are throwbacks (typical for a TES sequel I know), and some that have already been brought up already. Such as:

Cities. Actual cities. Baldurs Gate way back in 1998 had more life than any city in Oblivion. Seriously, they were godawful, and once you had seen one, you had seen em all. What was up with that? Did the citizens of Cyrodiil use prefab "make-your-own-city" kits? Its almost as bad as Mass Effect for repetitive surroundings. At least Morrowind had Vivec, Balmora, Ald Ruhn and Sadrith Mora.

Guilds, Great Houses, whatever, just get more of them. Quite frankly the guilds in Oblivion were, to put it gently, abso-fucking-lutely pathetic. Again, compared to Morrowind the guilds of Oblivion were shambolic, repetitive, pissweak, and over in five minutes.

Heres one of my most common ones, that wasnt all that better in Morrowind (besides having spells like levitate and teleport i.e. intervention, mark/recall). Magic. The magic system in TES from my experience is quite frankly boring. The Oblivion spell effects and animation were an improvement, but the blandness remained. The absolute uselessness of trying to "VIP" enchant was a complete waste, as it was so nerfed down compared to Morrowind, and completely invalidated as a "guild perk" with a simple official mod (as with some other things). Id like to see a few totally unique spell effects. The Deadric staves had some interesting effects that offered a little diversity (not much though). Polymorphing, cloning and necromantic resurrection could have been done, but a few more unique spells would be nice. Magic in Oblivion is essentially firing numbers at your enemies masked by elemental effects, or summoning monsters to attack them. Just spice things up a little in regards to what some more unique kinds of spells can do.

Actual powerful guild perks when you reach the head. I know this was kind of touched on in oblivion, where you could find a whelp to follow you around in some guilds, or a little helpful perk, but it still felt like a few minor "perks" for being master, and then its done. A little bit of continuation after reaching guildmaster would be nice. Heck, why not have being master as a large part of the guilds story and intrigue? Its just with Morrowind in particular, just as with Oblivion, once you reach the top of the guild you joined, its almost like its so done and dusted its just like you were before you ever joined the guild. Its finished, and no longer has any impact at all. Since these guilds are quite powerful forces in the TES world, youd think that wouldnt be the way it works, right? They just become so useless once completed, and as I said, completing them in Oblivion was rubbish anyway, due to the lack of interesting missions. The fact that you felt like you were only one capable of doing anything right, and that there barely any length to any of them. Oh, and no strongholds either.

Thats all I got now, since I work better with gripes and requests when actually sitting there playing TES games.

ilves7:

j-e-f-f-e-r-s:

An archipelago of islands would give you a lot of land to explore, and I think it would be a more realistic option for the developers. On a couple of islands, you have some large capital cities. Quite a few more have villages and outposts. On a lot more, you have monsters roaming about and caves and dungeons to explore. Think back to The Odyssey, and all the adventures Odysseus got up to while trying to make his way home. Now transplant that to a videogame setting. There'd be that sense of exploration that is integral to TES, and which I don't think a city could give.

Island could be great. On top of ship transportation (a la morrowind or other), it would be awesome to be able to buy your own boat and pilot it. Anything from small dinghies to full on merchant/naval vessels, either through quests (imperial navy? pirates? merchants? mermen? fishermen? or by purchase. I think naval combat might be a little too difficult to pull off well, especially if ships can sink and leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere, but being able to be on MOVING ships would be great... you could do some scripted ocean battles though,

Maybe you could even have a proper 'Pirate' class. "Yaar, I be the feared Argonian, Captain Scalybeard, and I be here for yer treasure!"

I suppose, if Bethesda wanted to get round the "stranded in the middle of the ocean" issue, they could implement a mechanic where if you lose a battle and your ship sinks, you're hauled up onto the enemy ship. If it's an imperial ship, you're placed under arrest. If it's a pirate ship, you're press ganged into the crew, and have to make your escape when no-one's looking. I'd also keep the islands not too far from each other. Maybe have a group of core islands that are pretty close to one another, then some more far-flung ones that are ripe for exploring and charting.

You could also have island feuds. For example, the citizens of Island A are losing trading ships to pirates. The mayor believes that the pirates are conspiring with the authorities of Island B. The mayor of Island B, however, denies the claims, and says that Island A itself is conspiring with pirates as part of an elaborate fraud scheme. You then have to investigate, and see who is telling the truth.

See, that's two ideas I came up with in 2 minutes. I'm sure Bethesda could come up with a million more.

It is a really good idea to have less dungeons, but make them bigger and more unique, someone wrote that on page 1. Maybe even Dungeons that cannot be cleared in one run.
Also i would like a decent companion system.
What they should totally do (imho) is change the whole quest system. More like in Morrowind, where choosing one faction will make it impossible to join some of the others. Have muchz more quests, but in a way where you will do a slighty different quest-line with different characters. Perhaps add an element of randomness. Unlike for example the fighters guild in oblivion, where after one playthrough you exactly know "Now i have to make the quest with the rats... now i have to kill the bandits in that cave... now i must go to that grave and retrieve some armor... and so on."
I don´t like that i have a dozen quests in queue all time in Oblivion and i can start any of them at any time i want and it makes almost no difference what level i am or what my status is with any of the guilds.

yes to the werewolfs coming back that would be sweet.
spears coming back would be a really nice thing too.
levetation and slowfall NEED to come back, they allowed for so much play.
no more level scaling of any kind, that got old real fast.
i'd like to see more changes in the world, good ones, kvatch burning to the ground was cool but being able to rebuild it would've been really boss. being able to build some landmarks in general is pretty cool. i really liked the statue you get for stopping that seige engine. i'd like to see the world change more as you progress through the main quest.
more enemy types would be nice, i understand the different feel they were going for with oblivion but just running into bears and wolfs and the ocational ogre or minataur was a little bland. i'd like them to combine the beastiary from both oblivion and morrowind to allow for it to be pretty random who you run into depending on where you are. just no cliffracers.