There's nothing inherently wrong with the protagonist having a voice. It's possible to get a great voice actor who emotes his or her lines well. But given limited time and resources, it all but guarantees a more curtailed dialogue script, and with it, fewer and narrower choices. And given some of the hanging threads and poorly-fleshed-out plotlines of Fallout 4 (Helloooooo, Institute...), if that has to be the choice, I'd much rather have a looser and more detailed plotline than a talking hero.
A lot of this I've been over before, here and there, so please bear with me.
1. Cut it out with the repeating quests. I would really have liked to believe that "Oblivion" and the Oblivion gates had gotten it out of their system, but Fallout 4 goes you one worse, constantly having settlements under attack and then chastising you for allowing them to go undefended. (Hot tip, campers: go inside and let all those machine gun turrets I set up do their job!)
Nothing harms a player's sense of making a difference in the world like problems that can't ever be resolved, and a sense of freedom depends on feeling free not to do things, not just do them. And, yes, I suppose I could have just said "Screw it" and let both Oblivion gates and settlements fall as they will... But the game isn't going to stop making me aware of their presence every few minutes.
Whether it's setting up a garrison that can take on all comers or doing enough mayhem in Oblivion that they give up even trying to come across (at least for an extended time), don't just make players futilely plug leaks in the boat, only to have more spring up.
2. Less having things occur in a vacuum. It's one thing to have people I pass talking about a quest flag that I've tripped; it's another to have a real feeling that you affect the world beyond the narrow confines of a story line. If I kill a thousand Cliff Racers, there should be fewer Cliff Racers when I go through the mountains. If I murder a few dozen bandits and start leaving their heads on spikes along the roads, there should be fewer bandits harassing travelers, and more trade goods moving between cities. If my major source of income is making ebony and glass armor, eventually I should start to see more mercenaries or guards wearing the fruits of my work. And, possibly, in time their price should drop.
Speaking of which:
3. The economies of TES games have always been wonky. And in at least some cases, subsequently "fixed" by things like a mudcrab merchant who has more gold than any of the merchants in town. Fallout 4 had you fix the limits on merchants' available funds by investing in them yourself, which is sort of cool, but it's also spending money to deal with a money problem that the game itself created.
The player and their looting is a source of infinite resources, a problem compounded by many players' willingness to look for loopholes to hasten their financial gains. But there's got to be a better way of dealing with the problem than contrived means of forcing the player to do more grinding. At a certain point, money for basic resources (healing potions, ammunition, common building resources) should simply not be an issue the player has to continue to address.
4. Guilds/factions/societies: Please, find something more interesting to do than "Complete these three quests to reach rank a, these two quests to reach rank b, these final quests to run the whole operation, which basically means you have a handy source of item 'x' and access to another merchant."
At the very least, if I'm really head of an organization, I want the opportunity to set some policies. From now on, mercenaries of the fighters' guild will all wear purple. The Mages' Guild is taking over the alchemical trade; all non-affiliated shops are closing, by force if we have to make it so. The Dark Brotherhood is no longer accepting commissions from anyone associated with the Thalmor. And so on.
Better still, I want flunkies of my own to send on fetch quests. No one in a guild of a rank below the leadership rank should be giving such a quest to its leader. "Oh, yes, that is quite a mystery. Handle it, you jerk; what do I keep you around for?"
Speaking of which:
5. Reputation. Fallout 4 really couldn't get this one right. On one hand, you're given the reins to a centuries-old conspiracy at the drop of a hat; on the other, the leader of the Minutemen is still apparently the only person who can get anything done.
What is it about my full suit of glowing dragon-bone armor and the flaming claymore on my back that suggests to you that I need to "prove my worth" to you? Or that you should give me vague instructions how to get where I'm going, rather than showing me on my map? Or that you should haggle about how much I'll pay for the gear I'm going to use to save your ass?
All evidence suggests I'm a power to be reckoned with; don't give me ultimatums. If I've demonstrated the ability to go through your most hardened defensive fortifications like an awl through wet tissue paper, your faction shouldn't be sending out random patrols to pester me; you should be tripping over yourself apologizing and trying to make peace.
And frankly, Jarl, if your son is addressing someone of the above description as "Another wanderer, here to lick my father's boots", I shouldn't need to kick his ass- you oughta be doing it yourself. The kid is your heir, and he has neither diplomacy nor common sense nor a basic survival instinct- do something about it, you twit! Gods, man, no wonder the Empire is running roughshod over Skyrim.
As unlikely as the protagonist's meteoric rise to power might be, people should still treat him or her like the earth-shaking, world-altering celebrity that all his or her actions seem to proclaim. If the Pope walks into your restaurant, you do not make him wait at the bar.
