I grew up on Morrowind, I won’t say it was perfect, but generally I’d like to make one solid point on these forums. Trolls will be trolls.
But they do have a justifiable point.

[indent]Size, yes compression only gets better. Yes as engines improve things only get better. But I find myself at a loss to defend (SOME) of the graphical issues. Ground and rock textures could use work. Now yes granted a lot of the game is quite well done. AND I have to give the Dev team lots of credit for their amazing usage of view distance. Their concept of what it is to be part of a world, to see mountains in the distance, that (epic) feeling is done amazing well. Heck I’d say over the 18+ hours of the game I’ve seen places it at number 1.[/indent]

But more to the point, why are we defending the creation of a game with DX9, and with some texture work that is just about the same of Oblivion, with the statement “the modding community will fix it.” Yes they will. AND I’m damn happy about it. But money is being given to the devs for what? Having the amazing modding community that ES has feels insulting to them to both use that as a retort to the flaws, and an insult to us as consumers.

Bethesda you did an amazing job. But some of your work fell short. Now I’m praying there will be a patch, or a DLC that improves on this. But as it stands, 6 years have passed, and the dirt under my Nord’s feet looks very similar to that of something 6 years ago.

We can’t claim the game is perfect, and the best way to defend a game is to fully understand and accept the flaws, but still stand by it.
Lets all just hope the trolls move on. And hope that Bethesda’s next game doesn’t rely on what the modding community can fill in. Especially if they design ES VI for next gen consoles.

TLDR : Trolls make one solid point, that people retort with a horrible response, “the modding community will fix it” shouldn’t be used to defend the actions of Bethesda, we should all demand the best quality work from them. If they make a console port, I expect to pay less for a pc version.

In my opinion, every single developer falls short somewhere, it's just what happens. For financial/compatibility or whatever reasons they chose to use DX9, it's not a huge deal. The fact that they provide us with the very tools they make the game with makes the "modders will fix it" response actually appropriate. Not many games can you say that for.

Exactly why they earn their money, I just feel they've fallen on this point more so than with their past creations.
ES IV and ES III ported to consoles. And they still made a bundle of money, all while at least in my humble view had the cutting edge feel that is lacking here.
I don't want Witcher two graphics, I don't feel its fair to demand almost rail driven game play on a pure open world. But I won't defend them on a soft spot by placing the burden of work on the wonderful modding community.

It's hard not to feel cheated by the visuals. They have a pit of money, more so than companies like Naughty Dog who have much better looking games (Uncharted 3). They should be spending more time on revamping the visuals.

If they were some indie company we wouldn't complain. I haven't complained about Red Orchestra 2's crashing for example.

There are some pretty places in the game, but there were also pretty things like games from 2004, which had a similar engine to this. It needs SSAO badly.

What is wrong with this new generation.. Since when does graphics matter when running, fighting or even going through a ruin you won't be able to notice.. Gameplay should be the main concern with any game followed by graphics.. Look at DA2 all graphics no game play so what if a game looks nice.. Sure some eye candy should be in the game but it shouldn't be the main thing it should be second right behind game play.. COD series is truly killing gaming when people want graphic right in front of game play.. I've been playing since the Atari 2600 and graphically this game is Amazing compared to other games..

This game look way better then oblivion.. but at the time oblivion was way better then Morrowinds games should be better graphically from the last game which skyrim is.. Bethesda truly knows how to create a game and IMHO are the only ones that are staying true to Traditional gaming.. Every one else is trying to be like COD series and killing off or dividing their community.. Sure the two studios create different games But you get what I mean..

No one is downgrading anything If you were around when gaming was truly gaming you'll understand game play should be the main focus not graphics.. You fall in love with a game because of the game play not the graphics sure one can't coexist with out the other you need some eye candy.. There is some things I hope we still had like skill, athletics and others Bethesda said it was broken then so be it.. But we should have more skills they keep taking them away with each game..

But to say "we're" downgrading ourselves is asinine..

Perhaps you're forgetting what Oblivion was like, and Morrowind was out the box

All the games suffered major bugs at release, and all the games would not be remembered for what they are without the modders. When we compare skyrim to oblivion, we're thinking of fond memories of modded Oblivion, Vs unfamiliar skyrim out of the box. The fact the only complaints levelled against it so far are strictly TECHNICAL (When Oblivion's level scaling and level system and smaller skill selection were immediate points of contention) it's a very VERY good sign.

I've been gaming since the ZX Spectrum and don't play CoD because I think it's a glorified whack-a-mole.

Gameplay does matter more than graphics, but Bethesda can't even do the little gameplay bits that count. Enemies don't react to your hits. You slide/clip through the world with just a minor "view bob". The stuff that's fun in Skyrim was already in their previous games. The animation system should be 10x better than this one, even though they revamped it.

I doubt very much that Bethesda expects modders to fix anything. I'm surprised they continue to support modding with the way people whine over every little detail. For every mistake they make they have to listen to the trolling of the bells from a hundred entitled fans. That alone should be motivation enough to make them work hard.

I recommend that every person who comes to the forum to complain go out and start making a total conversion immediately. It will cure you of your myopia and allow you to see the forest in spite of the trees. I've been modding Oblivion for years and every time I play it I'm more impressed. And that's vanilla.

And it's not entirely fair to compare a game like Skyrim to an intensely linear action game with a narrowly defined explorable space and almost 0 player choice. Bethesda's games suffer in terms of graphics and glitches because the games they make are a whole order of magnitude more complicated.

not much to fix with skyrim except bugs and those in time will be fixed with patches. in my eyes Skyrim booted Morrowind off the Great elder scrolls throne.

the game is a lazy PC port. I've seen it time and again. I had expected, naively enough, for Bethesda to rise above crap like this, but they didn't. They delivered a console game to the PC. Congratulations Bethesda. You svck ass. You're no better than Ubisoft or Rockstar when it comes to PC support. I will never buy another game from you.

Yeah but don't all RPG games do that.. As far as I can remember all rpg game or should I say all games do that..Bf3, Madden,fiffa soccer, it's either your gliding on air or clipping / teleporting around the game.. game engines are not cheap to make games cost up and around 22 million to produce or pretty close to it.. i don't know how much Bethesda's production cost is.. But I can say it's not a few million to produce that part is evident.. You also have to consider employee payroll over head and utilities.. so they probably make 32 -42 % revenue after paying off everything.. which isn't much..

just throwing that out there..

HOW do you feel cheated? What do you dislike so much about the visuals? I'd like higher res textures on any game, be it BF3 or Skyrim, or Minecraft, but you have to understand adding better graphics to this style of a game is harder to do well overall than a completely closed story driven game.

I pray that modders OR even better the DEV team releases pc changes to the engine that allow SSAO, heck DX11 / DX 10 features. But the game doesn't look horrible.
There are real issues with quality control around, BUT there are issues with people running the game on ultra and having issues with it not running on ultra, I've seen screenshots, read threads where people are down right crying about graphics and they've got a issue with their pc that is hampering Skyrim's ability to run at max.

I can't disagree with you that I feel partly cheated with a somewhat console ported UI, (all I want is a better perk window, and a character sheet) and the quality control on some of the textures. But their usage of vistas, and general area design make up for it. Along with the ability to say, hey this could be improved on, and guess what, we've got a modding community that will improve on it.

Uncharted 3 looks better than Skyrim??? On PC???

It most certainly is not. Skyrim is top 5 medieval RPG's as far as graphics (behind Witcher 2, Gothic 4 and maybe a few others).

FIFA was something that I was looking at. BF3 took their animation system because it was so good. The players all react to one another. Look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8HALcnZ19g

Even with payroll costs, you have to realise that Bethesda games sell 5m+ copies every time. They probably make over $400m with every game, minus expenses. All I'm saying is that we should be getting the highest quality.

It doesn't look bad, but it's the same visuals as Oblivion, but with shadows and better NPC models.

Uncharted 3 looks a lot better than Skyrim, of course. They have a modern engine that can output tons of shadows without slowing down. Check these:

http://youtu.be/PDW6Z9BYu5I?hd=1&t=2m47s
http://youtu.be/gOd02H-3lig?hd=1&t=54s

I don't get why people are complaining, The game is amazing. And I have it on PC and I hold fond memories of Morrowind too.

Did you actually read my post? Or trolling?
I'm implying we downgrade ourselves defending Bethesda by saying the few flaws that exist in the game will be fixed by the modding community. I'd much rather say hey, this game is great, it svcks you in and you really feel part of it. That mystic feel that Morrowind had, is here, the world feels right, and alive. Oblivion sadly lost that for me.
Now to put it simply the graphics could be better. I'm not saying that they're not great. But as I recall all ES 3d games have been cutting edge. The TEXTURE work doesnt' feel that way, EVERYTHING else does.
Please read and understand my points before saying that its asinine.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this game engine can do quite a beastly job for what it is which is DX9. Of which I believe The Witcher 2 was as well...
Anyhoo, with the little coding people know the game can be improved on just by editing the INI file. Sure I'd like a fancy in game menu, but if I had to choose between less settings, or more settings but more hidden I'd go the skyrim route.
Texture work takes lots of time and money, I can somewhat understand why some of it feels oblivion days, BECAUSE it runs on the same console. The wonderful thing is the fact that we actually can beef up the graphics through INI edits.