you all know i'm a detractor of F3, so don't act shocked.
1. what NWN had; give me a 3d engine and let people design modules for it. for example, dont add a DLC to the original campaign, but make it a completely separate adventure. AAA-titles-writing-guys: your writing sucks.
2. stop giving me characters with predesigned stories. it's much more fascinating if the quest can be solved by me, random guy, rather than me being the son of scientist guy, or the last survivor of a cataclysm, or the first emerged from cryosleep, or the dragonborn. these "you are hero" stories are lame.
3. a more solid combat system. one that cannot be easily exploited.
i personally don't care if you design your game and say, you cannot accomodate stealth - as long as the game mechanics are solid. if i can kill two daedra at level 6 by popping two potions and reloading a couple times, your game is bullshit.
thats what i think would make a game worth buying and that is playable. personally, i would like more, or rather, "this is what i expected from F3 but didn't get".
4. the "wasteland" is such a lovely and friendly place - stop it.
stop giving me this nuclear wasteland still full of canned beans and soda pop and friendly people. it's corny and in no way feels anything like an actual wasteland.
5. as an extension of 4, make it tougher on the survival aspect. envirnmental dangers, wounds, scarcity of ammo, posion, disease, mutations, radiation, and some insane monsters.
Gamma World was some much better as a post apocalyptic milieu.
6. REAL CHANGES. i want to break the game if i want to.
if your story makes me the hero of a nation, stop bouncers asking me for bottlecaps at the door. or give me the option to blow up the door with TNT.
ffs, wasteland 1 had some great interaction and that was 30 years ago.
also, i'm begging you .. stop it with the dialogue diarrhea. please do not vomit 500 pages of useless text into my game, i do not need all the embellishments of a flower seller telling me how the swallow sings in spring, i'm not here to buy flowers, and this does not add to the feeling of immersion, unless you want that character to come across as an idiot. Because in real life, minor details are not accented as, say, hearing someone say "I SAW A BIG ASS DRAGON CARRY A CHEST OF GOLD IN XYZ MOUNTAIN TODAY".
7. stop the dumbing down. get rid of the arrow pointers. remove fast travel, or at least remove player-controlled fast travel; otherwise there is no point to having a huge map.
as an extension of 5, make travel of all sorts be expensive, in food, water, fatigue, exposure to elements or radiation. do not let me walk in thick snow in a loincloth, please.
and finally 8. make it possible to fail the game.
i don't know why this ESSENTIAL feature was removed from gaming but if it's not possible for me to fail, i don't have any pleasure in winning.
one more thing; i'll try to explain what i mean with my hate for the writing in f3/skyrim/etc.
in F3 there's the story of your dead mother and her favourite bible quote.
you know, i really don't like that. not because it's from the bible, but because it's sentimental. It's up to me to listen for clues about quests when im talking to characters, but it's also my choice if i decide to ignore a character / writer when they tell me how i should FEEL.
I'm grognark the skullcrusher, don't tell me about kittens and babies.