Then the industry needs to change. I'm not necessarily suggesting open beta tests, because yeah, these games are built on hype. That's never gonna happen. But closed beta tests would be the best way to go about it. Do it like an MMO. They always have closed beta tests, and maybe a short open beta at the end of it all.

It's not worth it to have the hype and not have a polished game. It's not usual for a company to neglect its PC customers like this. I mean, it shouldn't be.

I appreciate that many PC users are happy with what they got. This in no way changes the fact that the PC UI is riddled with rookie mistakes. If in fact there was a testing firm hired to give feedback about the PC version, either that firm was hideously incompetent or their reports were generally ignored. 90% of PC ports, many made by obviously lazy teams, still do not mangle key remapping this badly.

Designating any keys as "reserved" is an inexcusably stupid approach. Designating 1-8 on the numpad as "reserved" is a cruel slap in the face to most left-handed PC users (not to mention a fringe of others like myself who simply prefer a left-side mouse arrangement.) As nice as the "favorites" feature may be, this abominable implementation effectively makes the game unplayable for a significant percentage of customers. As an absolute minimum, assuming the "favorites" coder(s) are too finicky or incompetent to accommodate needed changes, there should be an option to toggle that feature off entirely, thus liberating the numpad keys often used for basic functions like movement and interaction.

There are other problems as well, but this one strikes me as incredibly egregious. Every month or so, another prominent gaming critic produces a rant highlighting this blunder as an inexcusable sin committed by modern game developers. Most firms, including so many that would not normally be considered in Bethesda's league, have no difficulty avoiding this well-known and extremely frustrating issue. Compounding the problem is an apparent lack of support for user-designed remapping in the .ini files. The result is so bad that it sometimes seems less like professional inadequacy and more like a punitive action taken out of hatred for left-handed PC users.

I still haven't moved far from the spot were player control is granted in my own game, so I do not yet know if this botched rollout has put me off Bethesda's products for good. However, I do know that it has put me off snapping them up at launch. Their approach with this major project indicates a likelihood of serious and major playability issues for PC users during the early day/weeks/months of any future new releases. I plead with whoever might listen and have the means to act, make such fixes a top priority. If the major UI problems are fixed in a few days, that will surely leave a better impression than if users must wait for the release of the construction kit and a mod release to fix problems very few competent developers ever allow on store shelves in the first place.

Thing is, you vote with your wallet.

I keep hearing about this but I don't have this issue..so it's possible they never saw it.

But still, that, and some UI issues and other bugs, I found out almost immediately..not sure how they are missed. Oh..and did noone notice the supposed hi-res textures are actually low-res? Guess not.

From other threads it seems as if the hi-res texture bug is a driver issue with ATI cards, going into the control panel and restoring the factory defaults seems to solve it.