Well, im not so wistful bout spellmaking; felt it was terrific-ly overpowered LOL its fun but its kinda overpowered.

My main gripe are the guild questlines. Most other normal quests are more interesting than in oblivion, but the guild questlines are atrocious. And yea, i have to defeat this undead king to get a bloody book to join the bards college?! What, do i smash its head with a lute or something? Throw flutes at it? conjure up a grand piano (if only) to smash it to smithereens?

If they can't make the bards college a "bards college", then don't make one.

10 fingers, only able to wear 1 ring

Not being able to play the game without using two 3:rd party applications...
And even when i can play the game i have massive amounts of quest bugs

True, but this thread is about our biggest disappointments and that's mine. It's lack removes several (realistic) ways of roleplaying and would probably see more perks invested in it than some others that are mentioned on here a lot.

No hand to hand skill tree.
No athletics.
No acrobatics.
No spell making.
The illusion of choices.
Pointless marriage.
Bad companions AI.
Flawed magic system.
No spears.
No neutral choice in the civil war.
Not working on PS3.
Badly written guild quests and main quests, overall.

The fact that they apparently used a very small group of voice actors who obviously were incapable of creating a different/unique voice for each character they played.

With all the unemployed actors out there, you think they could have hired 30-50 voice actors, or at the very least found 5-10 TRUE voice over talents who can create more than a single voice so that every main character had a unique voice that was exclusive for that particular game character.

For example... There is one guy with a very distinctive voice who appears to have voiced dozens of lesser characters (the voice of the guy at Warmaidens AND Blethor at Blethor's General Goods in Whiterun) and he uses the same exact voice for every single one of them! Its really pretty silly considering how much money this game must have cost to develop, yet where the rubber meets the road they cut corners on the voice acting talent?

WHY????

There are a ton of great VO talents out there that can actually change their voice and create dozens of unique sounding characters, but instead, they hire clowns like that guy who obviously has ONE voice (probably his actual speaking voice) that is so distinct it makes every NPC he speaks for far less believable once you realize that this guy sounds exactly like that other guy you spoke to a few minutes ago in another town!

Another is the guy who voiced Jon Battle-Born in Whiterun, the merchant at the Pawned Prawn and dozens of others. Same thing again. The same exact voice for every single character. No effort to change his vocal tone, accent, etc. The same voice for all these different people who are often in the same town so you can encounter several people within a span of five minutes that all have the exact same voice.

What were they thinking? If these actors were doing a radio play you would have a hard time following who was who since they all sound the same!

Are these famous actors or something stupid like that? They blow their entire budget hiring famous names instead of doing the intelligent thing and getting as many UNIQUE voices in the game as possible! Instead we end up with something like 8-10 unique voices in the entire game speaking for the hundreds of different people you end up speaking with in Skyrim?

The size of the cities.

I think i know what you are talking about, the short cave with the bandit chief on a porch like area? I did that at about level 5 and beat it without too much effort beyond stepping back at the right time, and stagger locking them until I was out of stamina, then hitting him with normal hits inbetween.

Master is at least a little challenging at first, but as soon as you get past about level 10 or 15, it all falls apart.

The College of Winterhold story.

Maybe make that main quest line a bit longer? I wtf'ed when it was over so fast.

You don't wear it on your finger... it's a _____ ring...
You can't wear 10 rings and a gauntlet... but 1 ring and a kilt/skirt...

I'm surprised no one mentioned marriage as a disappointing feature of the game.
wives/husbands in this game are more like permanent companions than spouses.
unless this is some sort of dry commentary on the lack of love involved in marriage
and how people sought partners for financial/service reasons vaguely back in those days.

Have you seen the kids in this game... pure evil, or push-overs... They didn't create marriage for procreation and creating a family!

Funny that you can't kill kids, but you can beat them over and over, and pay a fine, or talk your way out of it... or use them as human shields... While the guards and companions beat them without thinking twice...
Then there is that kid who kills people, in the dark-brotherhood... Twisted child!

I think they grow children, in the corn-fields...

Then they would have had to worry about consistency in the next ES game, should it ever exist. The last time they let us do something that drastic, they had to retcon in a deus ex machina.

As for me? I guess the constant, constricting tomb areas get old after a while; seeing some more unique areas would have been nice.

hm.. now that I think about children..
the cities would feel a little less empty if they had more age groups than just kids, advlts and senile seniors.

oh and supposedly that child in the db isn't a child at all
but kind of disturbing nonetheless since it's voice acted by a child (as far as I know)

I bet a lawyer told them to put that in the game... OMG, you used a child character to do what????? Tell them she is actually an advlt, hiding in a child's skin... Yea, that isn't border-line creepy... Is that Jerry-Lewis's Wife/cousin...

For me it's a tie between the removal of attributes and the weak "radiant" A.I.

Don't think that's the actor's fault; but the people hiring the actors and telling them what to do. Someone is in charge of all of that and it's not the guys/girls reading the dialogue.

I'm most disappointed in the sloppy execution of the poorly done dialogue, sloppy and/or shallow quests and the less than thorough attention to detail with those things and with individual NPCs. I'm not saying it's all bad at all, but the gameworld, which is spectacular, obviously was the highest priority, and all of those other things suffered, but I also think the game hit the market before it was ready. There are typos in the game (typos ffs! )and dialogue that actually doesn't work the way it should so the conversations with the NPCs is awkward, and I did a quest that made so little sense that I'm convinced it got dropped off of someones to do list although all of the physical stuff had been done, but parts of it still needed to be completed so it would make more sense to the player.

the magic system is really crap.

everything else I'm fine with.

The story quests are too short and the Creation Kit wasn't released with the game.

The factions. Sorry to say it, but they don't have enough life in them ( I mean specific group activities independent of the player's actions), they're still four people in a room waiting for you to do all their work and make you their boss in 6 days. Their quest lines are also ridiculously short.

Short guild quests.

I think they had a great idea, (borrowed a lot of great ideas), but were too overwhelmed with how to implement all of them, well. Related to the technology.

I think they had to limit themselves, due to code issues, and just refused to accept that they needed more time. (Or were simply told they could not have more time.)

In the end, they settled for what they believed was "acceptable", however, owners of new cars drive like they own the car. We are like car-renters... Beat the hell out of it, and see if it survives. Walking into all reaches of the game, doing things "seemingly" out of order, because we don't already know the storyline they do... And throwing the game into machines that have more variety than packard-bell ever had.

Visuals are great, where they are great. Visuals are sub-standard, around all the greatness. (Shadows that are drawn on top of, not actually in the game. Shadows that make pac-man ghosts look good. Flame-heat-waves that can be seen through walls. Abused blur effects. Abused particle systems, Poor magic effects, and Stalled while also being dysfunctional GUI elements.)

Story-line... I think they took that good idea, then chopped it up, then had to expand it, then ran out of actual ideas... (Or forgot what they were going to do, or realized it cost a lot more to have voice-acting translators for multiple languages.)

Quests/tasks... Blah, blah, blah... yuck... Oh, a good one... almost.. no... ruined by one bad line... Ouch... did they just say that... NOOOO not again... Am I going in circles? What was the actual quest again? Which one is the main quest? What does this have to do with the quest? (Things I find myself constantly saying as I am forced to quick-click through the horrible story-line and useless history lessons and even worse political hen-talk that I couldn't care less about.)

But I do like the game... as a sand-box, to play around in... Making mud-crab-cake-mounds and tormenting the locals.

"To let users play they way they want, with no wrong choices."

No, make one wrong SKILL-UP or PERK-PLACEMENT and you are damned to unbeatable creatures. Make all the best ones... and you instantly become a GOD... Play they way they want, you must... and then it is actually balanced. Takes about five characters to figure-out what they actually wanted you to select, to provide game balance. Which is NOT they way I play. Not the way I want to play. Yet, they way I must, or become a GOD, or become a target-practice, broke, skooma addict.

No wrong choice... TRANSLATION: "We made all the choices for you. Pick A, B, or C... Correct, the answer is D!"

you just took the nail, and hit it violently on the head.

My biggest disappointment is that there are very few connections between events.

For instance, why do I have a Black Sacrament against my character? At least in Fallout 3, I understand why the Talon Company wants me dead. I saved a city from destruction, and the leaders at another settlement want to kill me for fouling their plans. It's never explained, as far as I can tell, why I incurred this punishment, and who ordered my character's death. And, for some reason, I am attacked constantly by nameless individuals who are out to kill me. I think it's personal; again, it's never explained why they have a grudge against my character.

I am, also, sick of being forced into quests. I want to explore the world, yet just about everywhere there is a quest, and I can't seem to avoid them. They are like a virulent plaque that has contaminated this world. In Fallout 3, I could go for days without adding a quest. I don't want to do quests, and I don't want to start quests. I am afraid that any quest I start will end up being broken. (I am constantly checking UESP for information on quests so I know what I can do and can't do. I am literally walking on egg shells hoping that my actions don't lock quests, and break the game.)