It's like being convicted of murder when you actually didn't murder; when I uploaded my dungeon mod, Den of Vuspyre, some complained of the mod being not able to load or random occurrences of CTD. My mod is nothing but a simple addition to the main game, having altered no main files/objects/etc. I swear I didn't touch anything in the main game files. The triggers in my dungeon also don't work, sometimes, and the Havoc-check box won't work also. Anyone have any idea why this occurs? and if Bethesda claimed that the Creation Kit they're sharing is the same exact tool the official crew used, why is it so buggy suddenly? it's like they gave us a "replica" version of the Kit. /rant

It's the same tool. Trust them. ALL PRAISE THE HYPNOTOAD!...er...where was I...actually, it is the same tool, but with version control turned off. They have just been using it for years, and none of us are that used to it..

Sometimes something that seems completely unrelaterd can cause something else to crash...I remember my mod started, for no reason I've ever been able to determine, to cause a CTD every time a save game was attempted, either automatically or user initiated. I just removed things until it stopped happening and rebuit the things I'd removed, and oddly it never came back.

Random CTDs with mods is pretty common. There have been discussions in the mods forum, but nothing conclusive yet about the cause.

This CK is a cut down hacked and slashed version of the tool they used.

Men having beards is also "common", but not all men have beards, do they? I've 12 publicly released mods and not one has invoked ye olden CTD (unless improperly installed), so it's not mods in general that cause said random CTDs, but particular mods which are either in need of attention by their creators, have not been installed properly, or are conflicting with different mods. To generalize so is at the expense of accuracy,
No offense, but BS. The public CK and internal version used by beth are near identical. "The only difference between your version and mine: my help option points to an internal version of the (same) wiki you have, my version is connected to our version control system, and the upload to Steam options are disabled. That's really it" (http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1354218-an-open-letter-to-bethesda-regarding-ck/page__view__findpost__p__20410072).

While this may be True -- They also have several third party tools that are used to create the game which we do not have access to (ie. 3d tools for exporting working Nif files without having to use a program like Nifscope to tweak settings) and those Nif files that are tweaked by us can be a cause of random CTDs since not all of the internal settings are understood completely yet, so it is possible that some setting saved inside the NIF could cause a CTD under certain conditions and still work just fine under different conditions.

Again I find it amazing that folks do NOT realize how much WORK goes into creating and releasing such a HIGH QUALITY game as Skyrim. My hat is off to Bethesda for accomplishing such a Beautiful world with such detailed scripting, characters, creatures Et cetera.

Bugs, sure, they exist in every game ever released. Again my thanks go out to them for fixing or at least acknowledging various issues with their first release, and CONTINUING to do so.

The CK is clunky, they get past a bit of that by having top of the line computer systems, and having whatever versioning software tied right into the CK for them. But they still deal with the same sorts of issues the community is only now figuring out as issues.

Bethesda is continuing to patch bugs, and much more importantly they continue to ADD new features to an already released and paid for game. Few companies do that to any great extent.

At this stage, they have given, for free, a toolset that they personally used to create their world. Man, few companies do that. ANd while clunky, there are workarounds for most of the issues that folks have already found. The ones that can not be fixed by the community are likely already in the sights of whatever marksman Bethesda has assigned to the task of making things better.

I know I have received 3 patches since I installed in December (was an xmas present to me). Each of which has addressed various bugs and each of which has added new features or in the case of the CK a new tool. 3 patches, less than 4 months time. That is one HUGE credit in my book.

The community has also addressed a huge number of bugs, and found various fixes for most of what they have found that has not yet been addressed by Bethesda.

Now, as to giving away 3d tools? Sorry, that is not going to happen from any company. The mod community has found GIMP to be useable, has already created NifSkope and various other tools to "fill in the gaps" with. Many more tools of various types are already in the works. SKSE, ScriptDragon, NPC Editor, lots and lots more.

Now of course creating mods, using NEW content, is harder as the tools required also require the modder to have more knowledge and skill, but it is truly amazing how much has already been created by the community, thus proving that it IS possible to create some really good mods.