Someone said it in another topic but i think he is right, that us players who are not new to the TES series thought they would build upon a game that was already fun and exciting and full of immersion. and that didn't happen. skyrim is enjoyable though but does get bland, but it may get better with DLC. we'll see what beth decides to do with the DLC and rumored free pieces of content that they might dish out over time.

You should move on when you believe that you are done with the game. Why come back to this forum?! It makes no sense.

Why do you come back?

Yea I'm confused too... skip New Vegas and go back to Fallot 3, a totally Beth project.

Fallout 3 had: Radio updating on in-game events, NPC's reacting to you accordingly, quests - while not too different had more variations than Skyrim's fetch this, kill him quests.
Many more quests in F3 had multiple choices and ending possibilities. F3 had a fairly even mix of "good" and "bad" quests. Skyrim are all "bad" (kill, steal) Almost all deadric are bad like they should be ,but their were no... say real divines quests to balance them out. Even some of the quests where you help NPC's you have to kill or steal. You could kill off one whole questline worht of people that you might be morally opposed to in Skyrim but are given no choice in another where you are forced to join their evilest ranks.

In F3 many of the side quests, played longer than some of the "Big" quests, in Skyrim they all seem short by comparison.

I could list many differences that make F3 better.. the confusion for me is... I thought Skyrim would start where F3 left off and get better. I believed it would have a minimum of what F3 had in choices and molding of your charcter. The only thing they really improved upon were the graphics. The world looks great!

I was surprised too that a lot of the biggest little complaints about F3 didn't get addressed in Skyrim either; having a way to change you characters looks in-game after the first build, upgraded equipment looking like the dull orignal just different stats to name two things.

One of the best things about Skyrim, exploration gets doomed by finding items before the quest is given, thus breaking the quest. This concept was not new for Skyrim, obviouly it was a major componant of F3, but it has an overwelming amount of problems in this area, way worse than F3. (goes along with speakiking to NPC's outta order) It was like the learned nothing from building F3.

That's my two pennies...

There's something missing from Skyrim, I'm not sure what, but it's that something that made Oblivion a great game, and its absence makes Skyrim merely a good game.

The guild quests are simply atrocious, the world seems bland compared to Obilvion (just my opinion) and the game feels so much smaller. I'd rather they designed all the quests themselves rather than the over-hyped and frankly awful Radiant Story system, which artificially extends the game by churning out simply fetch/kill quests.

I honestly wish that Bethesda would just acquire Obsidian's writers to show them how a proper RPG is written. Bethesda can make a world like no other, but their writing is sub-standard at best.

Also, Skyrim is not an RPG, at least in my mind. An RPG is about more than tacking on a shallow leveling system, tarted up by a shiny UI. Choice and consequence is the key, and there is none of that. That said, there was next to none in Oblivion either (don't want it to seem like I'm solely bashing Skyrim). It is the inconsistencies like still being referred to as some common street thug when you have saved the world from destruction, and are grandmaster of all the major guilds.

Improving on these flaws would go some measure towards addressing the balance, but I think Bethesda has made a choice to streamline and simplify, to appeal to the masses (a good business decision, but a slap in the face for people who want a bit more from their games).

I also think that someone needs to gag Todd Howard, as he endlessly hypes features that almost invariably turn out to be a letdown, don't work or are simply not there in the final release.

Skyrim is a 'good' game, but to call it a 'great' game, nevermind a great RPG is stretching the truth beyond breaking point.

It's definitely best Elder Scrolls I've played so far but falls pretty low in my all-time favorite list. It's a good game, if a bit repetitive and dialogue is pretty abominable (a considerable downgrade from Fallout 3, whose dialogue was pretty mediocre but for main characters it was just as good as in other Fallouts)

I enjoy it a lot, played 261 hours so far and on my current playthrough I'm using a good amount of mods.


Character creation
I was very skeptical to the no stat no class system when I heard of it, but it has surprised me and grown on me a lot. In Morrowind and Oblivion I always created a specific and somewhat unique character at the start, but once end level was hit my characters were all the same walking godlike character. Awesome at spells, awesome at swords and the best thief there was in the world. In Skyrim I have played 5 or 6 characters so far, majority of them thieves and each of them has felt slightly unique as I have focused on different skills and perk builds. The thing I do like about Skyrim's character creation is that I start out as anyone, and the more I build my character the more it is defined. so I start as a bland character and end up as something specific and not another Jack of all trades as it was in Oblivion. Because starting a new character in oblivion was always a question about can I be bothered to do this? Why not simply re equip different armor and weapons on my existing once since he can do everything a new character can do also. The perk system I do like as it allows me to play with various idea's and define my character more then I could in previous games.

The world, NPC's and conversations
I like the world better then I did with Oblivion, part of this is simply because I do enjoy the Norse mythology and find it to be quite interesting. And Skyrim fits quite nicely how I have thought and believed things would look like. It feels more realistic then oblivion's world and NPC's no longer have funny but stupid conversations with each other as it was in Oblivion. Overall NPC's are nicely done, and their clothing, behavior adds a certain realism to the whole game. I do wish that there was more conversation options in the game, a working reputation system that recognized you and what you had done. Like mages recognizing the arch mage etc..

Factions and quests
Mage guild was too short for me to really enjoy it, very limited quests, but the quality of them was decent, it should have been a longer quest chain, with more build up towards the end fight to really svck you into the whole story and at the end there should have been a choice on which "side" to join.

Companion guild I haven't played through yet so cannot really say much about it. The first quests seems ok, but have read people also find this quest chain to be short. Saving this faction for my Warrior character I'm planning on making.

Thieves guild is one of the quest lines I really enjoyed, the build up was nice, and it gave a real reason on why I as a new member in the guild should become the leader of it. The story was nice, but had some inconsistency. But I enjoyed the build up and it also painted the thieves guild as something more then just a thief organization.

Dark Brotherhood also had some logical flaws, but overall I did enjoy the story. Had some interesting NPC's in it and showed a guild that was a shallow shade of it's former glory in Oblivion. Liked the touch in the end of the line that gave you a choice on what to do.

Overall factions could have been done better, I would have liked to have counter parts of both Mage guild and Companion guild and some more consequences overall for the guilds. Quests is a bit of two edged sword, some are really nice, some are just another fetch and kill quest. Overall quality of quests in Skyrim and Oblivion I find good enough, Skyrim has a lot more quests and also like some of the quests you can find when exploring or reading books. The radiant quest system does what I thought it would do and works in a way, but it doesn't give the most interesting quests. Ranks in the guild is not something I really miss as I do like how the guilds in Skyrim is less organized then previous games, No longer they feel like this big organized organization, but a gathering of like minded fellow's who tries to carve their spot in the world.

UI
Vanilla UI was a bit meh, it did work but didn't quite feel right. Using SkyUI now so that problem was easy fixed.


Conclusion
Overall it is a game I enjoy, it could have had some more choices and consequences for the choices to add a bit of a deeper RPG mechanism. But it does what I wanted from it it allows me to create a character and play this character in a way I enjoy in an open world enviroment. A few minor things drag the whole impression down, and this has to do with lack of a proper reputation system. Once you are the leader of a guild they should recognize you for who you are, not talk to you as if you were just another newbie member. Also Guards could have benefited from this, instead of commenting on your skills reaching a certain level they could comment on your position in a guild. Combat is an improvement from Oblivion, I like the idea of dual spell casting and dual wielding as that is a thing I really missed in previous games. Spellcrafting is taken out and while I not really miss it, I wouldn't mind if it had been left in the game. It allowed for some creative ways to play a mage, although it was easy to break the fun of it by making insane OP spells in previous games. Smithing is a nice addition to the game, but as with spellcrafting it is also very easy to break the fun factor if you use all tricks you have easy available to make items more or less godlike.

If I were to give it a score I would give it 8 out of 10. It does some things really great, but due to missing a bit on the RPG bit it will not get a higher score for my part

Sorry , I meant the menu , I sometimes mixes words in english.

As for the fact i didn't finished the main storyline, I explored a lot of the map and did a lot of quest. That's the only thing I havn't done yet.

I usually buy a game when I'm really interested usually, my friend convinced me to try dark souls at home and I just love it! As for gears of war 3, I really loved the first one and second one's campaign. Gears of war 3 doesn't live to the expectations; cheap eapons and epic games removed the dedicated servers for the people who doesn't have the dlc. 2012 was to be my most important but didn't live up to expectations. I maybe spent over 200 hours into oblivion and more on Fallout 3 but I just couldn't grip skyrim

Every post i've seen you make is negative.

It's funny how people say New Vegas is full of bugs, I don't remember seeing one.. Ever. I spent 250+ hours with that game btw. In Skyrim however, just by exploring you break quests like there's no tomorrow.

Witcher.

Gosh - so many Skyrim haters....

+250 hours into it on one charater - I love it.
(edit)
I'll have to admit that some of the things I like and don't like about the game are somewhat conflicting. We have to consider that there are a few different "styles" of game play, not even considering the RPG elements. Different games may be designed to favor different playing styles. Many of the early adventure games were based entirely on trial&error. Nothing and I mean NOTHING could be assumed. Information (if there was any) could be scattered anywhere! It was not uncommon to find information about "AreaB" at the bottom of "AreaD". There was no information about the game external to the game itself and very little to be found in the game. The good news about those games was that they were rather small and a very very very small fraction of complexity that games like "Skyrim" are. Once you knew the whole game you might be able to play though it in an evening or two, but it might take you weeks to months to figure out (by playing out) every permutation of every decision.

However over time developers did provide some "logical" information in reasonably considered places. Enter an area and go through EVERY non committal dialog option with everyone and you ought to of gained enough information about the area to actually make decisions on the options that required it. TES titles added in game BOOKS that sometimes contain information about the game. Nice idea however all the titles are randomly scattered all over the place with no rhyme or reasoning.

Still many people would get frustrated and others would feel "cheated" because there was no way of knowing that your gaming experience could be shortened to as little as %20 of someone else because of the choices you made. "If I'd known that playing a Female would exclude me from joining XXX and doing battle with YYY I would of created a Male one instead", "If I'd known blahblah race was hated by just about everyone in the game world before I started I would of picked another race to play", "Where in the game did it warn me that if I killed whatsitsface I'd shorten my game by %40??". The list could go on and on but you get the idea.

Many players blame it on the "casual gamer". Indeed, when I'm juggling 12hr shifts and trying to live a REAL life its difficult at best to try to sort out and play to my advantage a bunch of overly complex and fairly irrational interrelations between tribes, NPC's and player attributes within the few hours I may be able to afford myself to play a title. Hence the popularity of the FPS and the itty bitty "maps" that come with them. All the "shoot em ups" have a few things in common: short, simple and repeatable. Much like "space invaders" or "PacMan".

IMHO: This why Skyrim is designed the way it is.
(end of edit)

Good Things

• The sheer amount of artwork used in creating the vast outdoor/indoor world is mind boggling - nicely done.
  
• The "Play area" is huge (as compaired to several other recent titles)
  
• I like the ability to save whenever *I* want to and have unlimited amounts of saves.
  
• There really is no "timed events" Things trigger when you get there hence
  
• There is almost no "retrace your steps" to change outcomes and
  
• All the quests are "stoppable" you can wander off and do other quests and come back to them
  
• There is no seemingly endless sets of complicated charater attributes along with
  
• No seemingly endless combinations of armor, weapons, spells
  
• Almost all the game can be understood simply by playing it
  
• The entire package looks awesome in Stereoscopic 3D
  
• Native support for 5.1 sound brings the whole world to "life"

Not so good things:

• Bugs - I can't fathom how something that was so buggy at release could gather so many awards

• Choices have NO effect on the game

• Simply clicking on the 1st dialog option without looking at the choices takes away having to THINK what the responce might be or what might happen.
  
• Race has little to no bearing on game play
  
• six has no bearing (outside of context related dialog and style of clothing options) on game play
  
• Your "choice" boils down to doing or not doing things. The only difference is the amount of game play.
  
• I'm at a loss as to why the game labels anything "guild" as outside of very minor dialog differences (mainly worthless greetings from guards) there is no difference in joining or not, helping or not or interaction with other "guild(s)". The only deciding factor is being able to do their "quests" or not. (see quest section)

• There is little to no need to retrace your steps

Outside of backing out of fights because of lack of skill or potions, every "quest" is pre-packaged in a way where you can't accidently do things out of order or have your decisions made during the quest effect the outcome.

• "Puzzles" are not

I thought the "hand" puzzles might of offered one of the biggest challenges but became rather easy once the soluton was discovered. Then there's the "find the lever and pull it" - have we really not progressed past Doom1/Quake1 style "puzzles"? There are a few that involve pulling multiple levers - with the only "bad" outcome is that you can't continue. IMHO the only "puzzle"(s) that required some thinking was gaining access to "the Blades" temple.

• "Quests" are rather boring and repetitive

Go fetch this or go kill that. Repeat. While each one may send you off into another section of the vast world there is very little difference.

Frankly, ALL games suffer from some or all of the above "issues". Make decisions change the game play and people become frustrated with having to replay entire large (or small) sections to change their decisions. Join one "guild" and unknowingly piss off another. Kill the wrong person and no longer get to playout some quest tree as it no longer exists. Pull the wrong lever (or out of sequence) and get killed and be forced to replay from a autosave minutes to hours of game play before. The list could go on and on.

While even the zealots might agree that "Skyrim" has its issues, overall "Skyrim" has been the single BEST $$/Gameplay investment since Zork-1, no other game have I logged as much time or enjoyment for sometime.

Yes, it's a classic love/hate dichotomy- I love all the good things about it, but since it is something I love so much, the bad things stand out in contrast all the more, and make me wish for them to be fixed and make it better yet. Of course patches and mods can only do so much, so the 'perfect' game is yet, and may forever be, out of our grasp. Personally, I give the good things abou it a 9.8 score, but factoring in the bad takes it down to a 9. Still one of the most awesome games of all time, can't argue that.

everything you just said is pretty much everything i have a problem with, and ive been called a troll and a hater, even tho i've repeated on here that skyrim is enjoyable. so i guess your a hater too

Meh,I at least loved it,One of my favourite game,i was hyped for oblivion and i got really dissapointed with it,But still i liked it,But skyrim feels like the real thing
Best game i have played since morrowind

i felt the same way i took a long break from it but then started playing recently. The reason i quit was due to lack of interesting quest. But i started doing the daedric quest and they are amazing.

yeah thats why i started playing again, i would like to finish out the daedric quests and search and search to see if there are any interesting or semi interesting quests left in skyrim that i haven't done

Funny how all i'm hearing about Skyrim on here is bugs bugs and bugs yet after 116 hours i haven't encoutered 1 mildly serious bug, neither have any of my friends who also play.

As with everything else, the internet exaggerates things.

EDIT: Oops, i'm wrong the freaking EXPLODING HOUSE glitch enrages me to no other.

I think that it's a great game in terms of what it has to offer, one of the best game of 2011. However, it really missed the mark set by oblivion, and while it was good overall bethesda didn't live up to their own standards set with oblivion and FO3. Even though it's a beautiful game, I would trade some of that beauty for deeper quests and dialouge, and for some of the amazing mechanics such as spellmaking that were scrapped. While this is still a praise-worthy game, I think that it will soon be just a action game if bethesda keeps going down this path (just like what bioware is doing with mass effect).

[Edits]

The Good:

Graphics.
Do not abandon the "see everything you should see" approach.

Interior "Levels" Design.

[Dragons.
They were done very well, likely as good as they could get.]


The Average:

Quests.

I find the majority of quests from Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim to be all the same, it always comes down to "get this, kill that" It's the neat venues, interesting people and what you get to do along the way that makes or break it terms of quality. The people are great, the places are nice, the what you get to do... not so much.

[Crafting.

Introducing new Crafting options was good, execution was poor at best. The inclusion of Smithing was a good thing, but it has no limits... one shot an Ancient Dragon with a dagger... this is one reason why "Balance" goes into the "Ugly" column. Cooking was useless, like Alchemy for the warrior set, but weak and pointless when potions are just easier to use. On the other hand, all things magic got too many limits piled on it. Alchemy and Enchanting got too many limits and unfairly sometimes. You can Enchant clothing to increase your Smithing skill, but not your Alchemy skill for instance. With Smithing you can make your own armor and weapons and increase them to ridiculous levels, but Spellmaking has been removed and there is no joining in the fun of crafting for spell slingers. Add in a lack of scaling for spells to compensate, even while weapons and armor get to scale with the player on top of all the other crafting perks and that is the other reason why "Balance" goes into the "Ugly" column.]


The Bad:

Bugs:
I know Bethesda said it was a new engine, but come on, it's still basically Gamebryo. I'd understand if the bugs were of something technical, but a lot of the bugs are of the "you broke your quest because you were playing the game" variety. I don't remember Oblivion having this many simple quest issues, even if you found something quest related... the game just seemed to deal with it and keep going.


The Ugly:

Balance.
Someday there will screenshots of Skyrim on fake motivational posters with the caption "B A L A N C E... you're doing it wrong". From what Smithing and Enchanting did for melee, to what all the missing spells and missing Spellmaking did for magic, all I need to say is: Bethesda... admitting you have no clue is the first step to recovery.

[The Magic System.
Even if Bethesda wasn't trying to pour hate upon spell slingers, the end result is the same as if that was Bethesda's intentions. The game is repetitive and boring for spell slingers at best and a hot mess of frustration and remembering how it used to be in the good old days the rest of the time. I think it was Todd Howard that stated that they didn't like Spellmaking because it was http://www.gamespot.com/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/forum/todd-howards-reasoning-for-no-spellcrafting-60023826/. Bethesda's fix for Spellmaking being "spreadsheety" was, in the end, to remove it entirely. This along with other decisions ending up nerfing magic and made the entire game terrible for most spell slingers. In the end, Todd made things much worse than the flaws of it's former "spreadsheety"-ness ever, ever did. To hold players to this mistake just compounds the slights as the magic system is horrible enough to justify Bethesda offering a replacement system even now for Skyrim, at least as a mod.]


Misreading your fanbase.
Yes Skyrim has sold well, but don't start thinking this proves you "got it right" with Skyrim. There are only two things Elder Scrolls games really sell on, hype and a tradition of a ridiculous amount of content. That's it really, you could of exchanged one story for another and changed most of the details and have got the same sales. So you got my money Bethesda, but I got something different [and something less] than what I got when I gave you my money for Oblivion and Morrowind...

...I got a game with considerably less replay value....

...I don't need to make another character. I don't need to see how things would progress were I change this or that because there is no "this or that" to change. There's nothing worth doing twice in Skyrim. The complaints about the loss of spells, the loss of spellmaking, the loss of attributes and it's incorporation into race and birthsigns, etc... are all factors in it. In my ~3 years of anticipation for what would be Skyrim, I never thought I'd of shelved it after just three months and after just one play through. Skyrim is such a bittersweet Elder Scrolls, I'm not sure what I should do when the DLC comes because absolutely hate playing the game. I don't hate the game, but I hate playing it [...because I run into missing features during gameplay too often and I'm like, "it would be great if I could do this still, but I can't"]. Skyrim is just a [near] soulless husk of pretty content with all the most terrible game design decisions reserved for the play style I prefered the most.

[EDITS]

Hi, I'm new here.

I started following this thread last night. I've never played an Elder Scrolls game before, or any RPG. Several people here say it's a watered down RPG, but I've got nothing to compare it to so I'll take your word for it.

But this is without a shadow of a doubt the best and most incredible game I've ever played. I've finished all the various questlines, got all the dragon priest masks now, some of the treasure maps, and am effectively coming towards the end of my obsession with Skyrim. The only quests left really are radiant in my once overfilled inventory of errands that I never thought I'd see reduced.

I've sunk 518 hours into this game on master difficulty, playing it everyday for three months, lol. That's how svcked in I got, even though the combat got a bit too easy towards the end from all the levelling up, perks and stronger daedric gear. I haven't come from Oblivion or Morrowind so I haven't seen how certain things would be repeated in Skyrim, but since everything was new to me, I've just been in wonder and amazement since november. My genres are normally action/adventure (ala tomb raider), point and click adventures (eg broken sword) and FPS. This game has a mix of all that and more. Exploration of course, light puzzles, secrets, traps, enjoyable combat, interesting weapons, fun character development with smithing and enchanting, cool perks, dialogue, interesting books to read, journals and notes left behind by NPC's to fill you in with the stories, beatiful landscapes, I mean Skyrim is like at least 10 normal size games all in one, with something for everyone; the ultimate adventure game really. I thought I was going to hate swords at first, coming from fps with guns, but I didn't miss them at all once I got stuck in. So that's my take on it. If this isn't a proper RPG, then it doesn't bother me, there were enough RPG elements to keep me happy. I acknowledge the game's faults, but I still give it 10/10 because it fulfilled everything I want from a game.

The main thing I dislike about Skyrim is that you pretty much do all the same quests for every new character you make. I am pretty much discouraged to create a new character because I've done all the quests before, and if I do them again there is no alternate route.

I found it to be repetitive, grindy and unbalanced.
It hit me only after 200 hours, but after that I just tried to get through the main quest (In order to be done with it before I put the game on the shelf) and every time I was sent into yet "another" dungeon I thought I was gonna die out of boredom and frustration.

It's a great game at first, but once you start to learn how it works and how little content there actually is then it becomes boring.
Go into "yet another" Draughr dungeon to fight "even more" draughr and get some [censored] gold, generic treasure chest and ebony crap to sell?
I just don't see how it can remain fun. Once you get good stuff there is nothing worth exploring for anymore.

And yet you played it for 200 hours.That's not bad going considering most games don't go much beyond the length of the main quest or roughly 10 to 20 hours.

I know. Like I said, it's a great game at first. It's an amazing game at first, but once that wall hits you then it hits you hard. For me it was too much and I couldn't stop focusing on the negative aspects and had to quit the game.
But yeah, I'd suggest for any of my friends to buy it, cause while they'll find it repetitive and grindy after a while as well they'll get a lot of entertainment value out of it until then.