Ok, I'll take a swing at this:
Survival/Hardcore mode
Multiple/Varied starts that are defined by race/class and keep it short and sweet
No big budget voice actor, just hire enough decent ones
As for skills, can the level by use shit. Force players to purchase skill increases from trainers. This will incentivise questing and putting certain factions at odds with each other will force players to make hard, practical choices about their character role and build.
As for player-role, make it faction based. Let us pick how to approach the main quest, for example, siding with the Thalmor, or Empire, or Daedra. Let the world state evolve based on which faction was chosen.
If you absolutely can't shake the "chosen one" protag nonsense, then make it ascendant: we start as a run of the mill peasant but by the end we have become a new divine (Empire), new aedra/ancestor (Thalmor), or new Daedric Prince (Daedra).
Axe smithing, and bring back powerful artifacts. I shouldn't need to explain why this is necessary.
No level-scaling. Hand place encounters and loot. Or, at the very least, make the scaling wide and loose, but cap various enemy types; no full daedric/glass armor bandits etc.
As for combat, give enemies more varied tactics. Let them flee towards allies when health is low or odds are unfavorable. Let them buff and debuff. Bring back spears and other weapon types, and various armor pieces.
As for dungeons, in my experience any time Bethesda tries to be clever with dungeon puzzles, a bug or some moon logic typically throws a wrench in the plans. I can understand why they decided to keep it simple after morrowind, but that doesnt mean they need to be all samey and straight/looping paths. Make some submerged ruins, maybe a ship graveyard which requires both underwater and over land travel. Make a dungeon that is a vertical climb/descent. Make a dungeon where changing things on one floor manipulates things on another. Basically, put in some effort you lazy cucks. No more matching hieroglyph puzzles!
In all honesty though, I don't give a damn what they do with this series. It's always been shit despite some interesting design choices in some of the earlier entries. Based on Fallout 4 we can already infer a lot about the next entry, most importantly though, it wont be worth anyones time.