The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim was a massive hit upon its initial release all the way back in 2011. Since then, it's been re-released multiple times on multiple platforms over the years. That said, Skyrim is far from a perfect game despite its undeniable success and deserved critical acclaim. Many have argued its flaws over the years such as its somewhat underdeveloped locations or lack of player agency in the main story, for example.
This has only become more common as the release of The Elder Scrolls 6 draws nearer. People are more anxious than they've ever been when it comes to ensuring that the next Elder Scrolls game not only learns from Skyrim's successes but also its failures.
6 Increased Player Agency
This is a problem that goes beyond the Elder Scrolls series, but Skyrim is sort of infamous for being somewhat of a railroady experience in comparison to previous outings. The player has virtually no influence on the outcome of the main story and there are no unique endings for the main quest.
Granted, neither Oblivion nor Morrowind have multiple endings either, however, Daggerfall has five different endings. Skyrim could have brought this back by taking a page out of Fallout: New Vegas' book and could have included in-depth ending slides for the main story and major faction side quests. This way, the player has a much greater incentive to replay the game in different ways. It would be really cool to see TES 6 do exactly this.
5 In-Depth Crime and Law Systems
Skyrim has a rather simple system of crime and justice. The player will commit a crime like theft or murder and, after being spotted by a guard, will pay a fine, bribe the guard, or serve a night in jail depending on the circumstances. It is not a very complex system, and it doesn't play any role in the player's relationship with a particular faction, town, or city, and it doesn't factor into any quests.
Fallout's faction reputation system would've been an interesting thing to see integrated into Skyrim, especially since unlike Fallout, the Elder Scrolls doesn't take place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Daggerfall in fact had a whole court system in which the player used their skills to plead their case, with the outcome being dependent on how well they defend themselves. TES 6 would do well to learn from these games and improve on Skyrim's rather basic system of crime.
4 Bigger and Better Cities/Towns
It's no secret that Skyrim's towns and cities are smaller in size, even when compared to past TES games (though they're drenched with personality). Some have speculated that this is a result of the world being so dense with locations that not as much time and resources could be devoted to the cities and towns as was needed to make them truly impressive.
It's actually somewhat common for players to add mods that make the cities and towns significantly bigger and denser than they are in the vanilla game. TES 6 is quite a ways away, but it would definitely be nice if the developers are able to put more time into making the cities stand out more and truly be major in-game hubs. They need to be places that draw the player in beyond just being places for them to offload their loot.
3 Better Skill Checking
Unlike other Bethesda titles, Skyrim does not feature a whole lot of skill checking in dialogue. There are few, but they relate entirely to the Speech skill and don't yield very many rewards. In comparison, Fallout: New Vegas is a game that had quite a few different skill checks beyond just the speech skill scattered around the game. These would also allow for a multitude of outcomes ranging from obtaining better rewards for completing objectives to unlocking alternate paths during quests. Skyrim, on the other hand, mainly relegates skill checking to getting better prices, bribing guards, and scaring muggers.
TES 6, whenever it launches, should really try to outdo Skyrim in this area. It could incorporate more skills into the checks themselves and for a greater number of purposes. This would increase the significance of the player's build by emphasizing their advantages and disadvantages specifically through dialogue options, making skill checks much less trivial to the play experience.
2 More Consequential Character Building
While Skyrim's character-building system is certainly fun, the game does make it very easy for the player to create a "master of everything" type of character. Normally in a role-playing game, and even in some of the past TES games, the player builds their character along the lines of a specific role with well-defined strengths and weaknesses and that build defines the experience the whole way through. Skyrim on the other hand easily allows (and in some ways forces) the player to become extremely overpowered to the point that individual builds don't matter all that much both in terms of game difficulty and in terms of content accessibility.
Thankfully, Bethesda seems to be willing to move away from this philosophy as evidenced by the upcoming Starfield, which looks to be placing a renewed emphasis on character building. If this strategy is successful it might lead to a similar return to form in TES 6.
1 Realistic Faction Questing and Interaction
Doing faction quests in Skyrim can definitely be fun, however, much of the faction questlines involve the player starting as a nobody and becoming the leader within a few short hours (or days per in-game time?). Furthermore, most factions don't interact with each other at all. The Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild interact a little, but that's about the extent of it.
What would be really cool is if doing one faction's quest affected other factions and their questlines in some way. Perhaps the player can form alliances or wage war against other factions for control over cities and towns scattered throughout the world. The player could, rather than just becoming the leader inexplicably, join a faction and do jobs based on their character build, which itself could potentially determine how the questline progresses. This would be one of those things that, should TES 6 try and experiment with, make it well worth the wait .
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.