I would consider upgrading your computer. It's not too difficult to save a lot on one if you build it from scratch. Adjusting the settings also helps. Turning down shadows, grass detail and shading really helps save 'pooter frame rate. I can pray that
Crysis and its ilk are the last in a generation of detailed games while us economy players catch up. The Oblivion engine, though not the worst, is certainly not the best either. I still think the faces needed a lot of work, and making the Argonians and Khajitt more humanoid was definitely not fun.
I'd also like it if they expanded the skills, and possibly went into skills that you don't need for combat, but can be used to make objects you can sell (for example, weaving or something). I think it would broaden the world a bit more, especially if you could actually open a shop and run it (but that opens another can of worms - I'd like a shop I could put things in to sell automatically, because it'd be neat, but I'd want it to be able to run without me having to constantly pay attention to it). So, pass on the shop but I'd like more skills.
It's interesting you mention that: Morrowind had numerous plugins for 'crafts' and blacksmithing that ran under a set of skills seperate from the vanilla version's. Though the mods are cleverly done, it still felt odd in a world where every Tom, Dick and Harry can somehow afford a suit of Bonemold armor (considering the fluff material said it matched the expense of a full suit of steel, if not more). Well that and the mods that
required you to eat or starve and take point losses.
I don't think that the developers themselves should even entertain that idea themselves though; that's something modders could easily add with the Construction Sets.
Also, I've not played the first two games, so I'm not sure if this happens, but I'd like it if you were able to play in the same section of the world at a different time, so if you learned your way around in Morrowind, you could translate that to geography in another game, but the cities and towns might be different. It'd be really cool, too, if you could run around in the ruins of a city you actually played in in another game (for example, run around the ruins of Balmora) or wander in a city that was just a small town in another game. I find things like that endlessly fascinating.
The original Elder Scrolls games were
huuuuuuge. I cannot stress to you the size of the first two, but they are still incredibly impressive feats that have yet to be matched. Of course, the cities were boring and the environments were nothing to write home about, but Bethesda gained much acclaim for their excessively large playgrounds. The only other game that remotely matches that size was an old Privateer-esque simulator in which several billions of possible worlds could be explored: Thanks to a clever generator that was only restricted by key phrases (can't have planets with potty mouths, eh?).
I think the biggest problem with Morrowind and Oblivion, however, was their inability to engross players within their respective landscapes. Even Cyrodil and Mournhold seemed tiny, and there was no capability to get lost far in the forests. I would be grateful for simply a couple cities, but believable cities at that.
There is something very exciting about visiting a cramped, smelly corridor of a Imperial colony set in the Black Marsh. Wooden apartments crammed up against eachother, people trying to avoid buckets of waste water being dumped on them and the streets filled with animals and people as they shove you out of the way. To see boats actually
floating down the marshy river and unloaded at docks would make it far more active than a city, such as Vivec, where you only see the occasional citizen walking up and down as the canals lie empty and forgotten.
