I am curious. Skyrim is a great game, not disputing that but it seems like nearly everything fan's complained about in regards to Oblivion is still ever present in Skyrim... You would think this may have been a good opportunity to improve on certain weaknesses and show fans you're actually evolving rather then putting a shiny new skin on Oblivion and changing the setting.

-Story is still weak
-Most characters are forgettable
-Modders are fixing bugs and making balancing tweaks at a much faster pace and more successful then any official patches.
-Nothing you do in the world seems to matter or have any noticeable impact including completing major quest lines; making the world seem very dull and lifeless and rarely does anyone or the world react to what you have done.
-Repetitive content throughout the world. Beyond level 30 I feel as if I am doing the same things over and over again. "Go here, kill some draugr, go here, kill some bandits... oh look a dragon!"
-Poor level scaling and balancing
-Anti-climactic conclusions to most major quest lines
-Traveling by foot offers almost no rewards or excitement other than sight seeing.
-AI is almost just as bad as it's always been throughout Oblivion, Fallout 3 and New Vegas
-Under developed follower system.

Seriously these are pretty much the same complaints rampant in Oblivion; is Bethesda incapable of evolving or anything that could be considered innovative?

I was having a lot of fun with the game until around level 30 at around 50 hours... After that my interest started to plummet due to the reasons mentioned above

I do enjoy the game but I can't help but feel Bethesda learned absolutely nothing between the release of Oblivion and the release of Skyrim.

Similar topics have been made before. I myself made one. They know how to make worlds, but aside from that......you are better off keeping expectations low until they hand that pesky stuff over to people who know how to get it right. I'm pretty much convinced they can't make a balanced or challenging game if their lives depended on it.

That said, I do enjoy their games, but it requires overlooking a lot of issues that crop up, and migrate from game to game. Historically though, they have some of the least responsive devs I have ever seen.

I don't remember most of those from Oblivion but I'll take your word for it. What they spent (what I assume) the vast majority of their time on is "All the dungeons are exactly the same". Now Beth being Beth, i.e. the best world builders in the business, probably took this one to heart more than any other. So what did they do, they made almost every cave, dungeon, and ruin unique.

thank god they ignore most of it otherwise ES would svck, but they do make some changed because of criticizism
that is why there are carriages
toggleable HUD
much more voice actors
dungeons that arent the same thing over and over again
and a lot better level scaling

God! How many of these threads get made each day!? Why can't the moderators just make a Complaint mega thread?

They value it. They soar in sales and acclaim for a reason. And that's by not listening to opinions like yours.

And to answer your thread question. Yes the value our feedback greatly.

I've never known Beth to cave and listen to players--correct me if I'm wrong--still I think their games are the very best out there (Witcher's good too though). time for another cup of coffee.....

they do value the criticism but they have way more experience developing video games than anyone on this forum so they know what they should or should not do and a lot of the time people are asking for impossible stuff

Many MANY things were taken to heart I imagine in making Skyrim. I have been commenting on this board since late 2008, hoping Skyrim would be made soon after. I can name off several things I myself suggested that ended up making it in. One idea I brought up (though it is probably unoriginal, but I cam to it of my own accord) was the ability to encounter the Falmer. Another was Dwemer ruins, though I am sure many a person wanted this in for Morrowind nostalgia.

Yeah, there are significant problems with the game, but you can't really say that gamesas hasn't listened to criticism. Oblivion sold millions of copies, and there's just no way to react to every single customer's complaints. They did do much better in the voice acting department this time around. The world is much more varied, the quests more interesting, and I find that NPCs are much more multi-dimensional this time around. Every NPC seems to have their personal "hook" that makes them stand out from the rest. TBH, the only two NPCs I remember from Oblivion are the necrophiliac alchemist and the Adoring Fan.

TES games have always been horribly broken, unbalanced, clunky and sometimes ugly. Yet there's something that other games don't have, that keeps you glued to the screen. I've personally spent 300 hours on this game, and I still DETEST the user interface so much that expressing it fully would probably get me banned. I think it's the care put to the world design, lore, and the way exploration is rewarded constantly by feeding you interesting little stories as you discover new places. Oblivion had none of that, and now it's back, so definitely the devs listen to customer feedback.

Yes, they only know how to do the majority of the work an make a game that sells 10 million copies. But besides that they don't have a crew of thousand of modders who are able to make mini add on touches that when you combine 20 or so of your own personal preference does skryim actually end up right.

/sarcasm

of course they do, perhaps to incorporate ALL the good ideas would have been too ambitious, and they ran out of time. I think the very fact that skyrim is the way it is, and not a clone of oblivion, shows how much they listen.

I think Bethesda does listern to crictism when it's put out in a constructive way, but at the end of the day it's up to them if they listern to it or ignore it.

Judging by their recently released games (between 2000-present), it seems they really haven't at all, IMO. The games are still really good in general.

Off-topic, but you know what would be awesome? An open-world FPS shooter that isn't as clunky as the Fallout games. Something smoother, like Battlefield, but with open-world exploration and RPG elements as well. I know many folks on this particular board wouldn't care for that, but if Beth does one thing well it's giving that sense of "THIS WORLD IS SO BIG LOOK AT EVERYTHING I CAN DO AND ALL THE PLACES I CAN GO ARRRRGGGHHHHH I SO EXCITED!!!!111!" I had hoped that Borderlands would be like this, but it really wasn't. And Fallout was too rigid and the guns never really felt very smooth. VATs just made things worse, as did the lack of sprinting and alternate modes of transportation.

They take a lot of feedback from fans into consideration. It's why so many aspects from popular mods are present in Skyrim. BGS aren't perfect and I have a whole list of gripes but Skyrim is still my game of the year and world design is bar none.

No Bethesda is good at hearing criticism ... But then they make something else worse in the process. And sometimes they just ignore us (like how waaaay more people asked for spears, crossbows, and throwing weapons then for dual-wielding and dragons).

Mixed feelings really. Attention to and enhancing the lore of Skyrim is infinitely better than in Oblivion. I started getting fluttering movements in my heart when I heard "Haafingar" in place of Solitude, the Bards College, making temples more interesting and unique, and that Reachmen were in game. I was also afraid that they were going to Fallout-ize TES V and make it grim 24/7, but luckily this doesn't seem to be the case.
On the other hand, the guild selection and quests are horrible (I became an Imperial officer after 2 quests?!) and I almost blew a gasket when I heard my first dunmer with a british accent instead of the raspy 50 year old smoker voice (a MAJOR complaint by many).

When it comes to changing things people didn't like, Bethesda is usually very responsive with that.

Level Scaling? Much better.

Player level-ups? Much better.

Animations? Much better.

Spell graphics? Much better.

The price is, of course, the games are getting progressively simpler and simpler as more and more features from previous games get cut, as Bethesda often takes the approach of "axe it so we don't have to fix it." And Bethesda often turns a deaf ear to restoring features from previous games that they cut.

Dialog is annoying in this game. For instance. They must think we are a bunch of idiots not to notice things like King's Olaf's verse choices resulting in the same outcome. Persuasion checks for simple things like entering the city. Who would bribe a guard. While we're on the topic. Why is it that they missed everything having to do with speechcraft. In Morrowind it was so necessary to have this ability in order to get into content which would otherwise be missed. THis is a good thing.

The bottom line is. If they spent less energy creating voice acting for every Npc in the game they could cut this down to a quip they could say so you could use that to determine the NPC's mood and how you would want to go about speaking to them. Then you could have a more personalized message in text which would create more dialog. I like the text box in morrowind, it was well thought out. But then people started to complain about reading to much. So what? skim through it and click the highlights and move on. At least the added content would be there so that it would appear to be more in depth.

As someone who couldn't stand Oblivion, I'm telling you they have acted on some of the criticism.

- Voice acting is better
- Quests, including the MQ, are better
- The world is more 'alive'
- Carriages
- Animations are better
- Leveling and its associated mechanics (including perks; whether you think it's too simplified is irrelevant- the old system needed an overhaul as it was outdated) is better
- Level scaling is better

There are a lot of things to criticise and nitpick, and I've done so myself. But, if you care to distance yourself from the game, you soon realise that it does what it does very well, and only when you start to zoom in on things do you notice the cracks. It's a big world, and there's a lot that needs doing to create it.

I'm convinced the problem is simply that they need to get better writers and concept people. They, by their own admission, waste a lot of time in the prep stages.

No they dont if its bad. Yes they do if its a good.

why is it that every quest starts and finishes with one Npc. You engage someone they send you on a quest which is clear out a cave and then its done. What happened to quests that had some continuation into other aspects of the game and depending on how that was handled would determine future play. Factions are way to simplified. They should have spent more time on factions. more meaningless quests /= more content.

A good one to use as an example for that is the Cheydinhal Recommendation quest for the Mage's Guild in Oblivion.
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Cheydinhal_Recommendation

Not only do you end up turning it into a different person, but you meet Falcar again later in the Mages Guild when you ambush the Necromancers. It was stuff like that which made it feel more dynamic.