Mikaze said:
Exterminatus said:
More immersion.
Less generic fantasy bullshit.
Less DICKING with pre-established lore.
MORE VOICE ACTORS... I'd even be content with text boxes for lesser NPCs.
Less concentration on GRAFIX!!!1 and more on story, depth, role-playing and re-playability.
INTERESTING CHARACTERS.
Less repetitive combat.
Get rid of the fast travelling, as it makes the world feel incredibly small.
Better physics engine.
More interesting spells.
MORE dialogue options and quest branching.
Bring back the old armour slots.
More weapons and armour. Make Daedric armour and such RARE, like it used to be.
Some other stuff I haven't thought of.
Here we have somebody who probably didn't play Morrowind. Without fast travel, it takes about 2 weeks real time to walk from one place to another. Admittedly fast travel did make the world feel small but to me it was infinitely preferable to trudging through the mountainous areas of north Vvardenfell looking for a small village which I found before but have apparently misplaced during the course of my adventures.
2 weeks? Daggerfall took 2 weeks to cross in real time, but it was also the size of Great Britain. Morrowind and Oblivion took maybe 2 hours to cross the map max.
Personally I loved Morrowind's style, in my opinion Vvardenfell was a very interesting place and I honestly never got bored of trekking throught the ashlands (crazy I know). Hopefully, in TES V they bring back Morrowind style fast travel with perhaps some more destinations dotted across the map. Oblivion was bad because it was made on the assumption that you would use fast travel, in several quests you must travel the length of Cyrodiil multiple times. If you get a quest in Skingrad you should be able to do it in the vicinity of Skingrad.
Other things I want to see:
No level scaling, don't reduce it, don't tone it down, just get rid of it, I never liked the idea.
No built in walkthrough, sometimes the 'journal' and 'compass' in Oblivion were just insulting. Let us stand on our own two feet and work things out ourselves.
More choices and consequences, in Oblivion you made very few choices and those that you did make had very little consequence. We should be able to take different paths down most quests and if we screw up, have us face the consequences.
More ambiguity, in the previous games the Empire had united Tamriel by often using questionable methods, in Morrowind you had to think, am I really doing the right thing, helping the Empire, it would have been better if you could weren't still forced down a linear main quest, but the ambiguity there made it better. Similarily with Dagoth Ur, even if he was doing things the wrong way, you could actually sympathise with his motives. And the Daedra were really intriguing and mysterious, always doing whatever helped themselves.
In Oblivion all that goes out of the window, the Empire are the good guys and the Daedra are the bad guys, no questions asked. Your main advesaries want to destroy for the world just for the lolz from all you can gather. (Apart from that final speech which, due to several inconsitencies with the lore I am inclined to pass off as the ramblings of the madman.) All the quests in the next game should make you think about whether what you doing is right (apart from the customary Fed Ex assignments) sometimes you can find a definitive answer, sometimes you can't.
I'll end it there or I could go on for hours.
EDIT: And about the online debate, small scale co-op could be nice as long as it doesn't detract from the rest of the game. Anything beyond that can stay away from the Elder Scrolls.