The game is amazing and this is either your first game, ever, or you have no experience with RPGs.
Sure, there is more to wish for, but, there is not a single game out there that will give you more then skyrim. And thats why we are all very pleased with it.

I'm lvl 50.
I've done everything the bugged quests allow.
My inventory has 160lbs of misc quest Items I can't drop.
If skyrim was in my xbox, I'd tell you how many caves I explored (and I actually explored them)
But I got the achievement for 100 dungeons traveled.... at level 29.

I DID NOTICE THAT NO TWO CAVES WERE ALIKE. BRAVO.

However, I'm tired of caves.

Awaiting DLC. Might trade in.

One of the most important points made by the OP is undoubtedly true, in my experience: After a certain point in the game, it seems to punish exploration rather than encourage it.

I love skyrim, have played it over 100 hours...its a great game, but it is definitely lacking in some areas, most were addressed by the OP here.

There seems to be a serious lack of variation in many aspects of the game:
-Indoor Environments: are better designed than previous incarnations, but the tilesets don't change and there is nothing actually interesting in any of them. The experience in one of the Nordic tombs, for instance, is leagues above your typical Oblivion elvish ruin dungeon crawl, but whereas you usually got some sort of unique payoff at the end of Oblivion (and very often in Morrowind) dungeons, there's none of that here.
-Dearth of enemy types: every draugr, falmer, and bear looks the same. Gets pretty old pretty quickly. The dragonpriest thing was a great addition...if only there were 5 other "elite" groups of enemies like that, scattered sparcely through the dungeons, it would make the experience much better.
-Randomized gear: the randomized gear is almost always better than the extremely small amount of unique gear in the game, and is definitely better if you are a good armorer and create it yourself. That said, you hardly ever get a relevant piece after a certain point in the game, and the dungeon crawls get even more boring as a result. This seems to have been an intentional design decision, but in my opinion is a bad one. The fact that the actual number of equippable items has dropped so much also is a factor here, as there are less spots to equip new gear you get as well.
-Quests for the factions in the game are unsufferably repititious. Dark brotherhood mission: "kill this guy in this dwarven ruin", thieve's guild mission: find this object in this ruin, mage's guild mission "find this guy in this ruin". Stop sending me to the same-looking darned ruins! Perhaps if the ruins themselves had unique aspects related to the quest....but they don't...they are just like every other ruin in the game, and faction quests end up essentially becoming the same thing as every other random "task" in the game.

Its a testament to how what a great core experience this game provides that the repetitiveness of everything in this game doesn't overcome it. I enjoyed this game the entire time I played it, I do think it would have been better if everything didn't feel so dang repititious.

Its the tone of his OP that we have seen far too often, put 70 hours into a game then come here to complain about too many dungeons, it is hypocritical, I bet he fast traveled everywhere, then to state about IGN's review and say its wrong, yes that does sound like he thinks his opinion is fact! As soon as you start bringing others into your rant post you lose all credibility, he was basically calling the IGN reviewer a lier! What about the rest of them? Are they all wrong too? Therefore his view is fact.

the guilds were lacking something

Skyrim is a great game, but doesn't come close to matching the hype imo.

@OP: Just play Morrowind. Seriously. Skyrim is just diet-Morrowind. It's good, but it's not as good as the full-calorie soda. Oblivion is zero-calorie-Morrowind and just plain svcks.

the game could honestly use a lot less 'filler' material.

NPC: "It seems I have lost something in a cave.. could yo.."
ME : "DONE"

NPC: "We need to thwart our oppositions defenses, for some reason the most effective way to do this would be asking you to find something in a cave.. perhaps solve a door puzzle or something you will see multiple iterations of in the future"

ME: "Ehh.. okay.. sure"

My post in a forum regarding the issue: "Geez, there sure are alot of caves tied into the story and the related arcs.. does it lighten up?"
A response later: "Well, if you don't like the caves in the main quest arc, you can always go explore the unrelated caves"

So my first character is almost 50... needless to say, I'VE SEEN A PISS TON OF CAVES. You wonder why this game is 6gigs? Clever compression? No, limitless endless caves and tombs. Most very similar in style. For the sake of file space, I would go further to suggest that these caves are very similar if not replicated in some areas, but I wasn't paying attention at the time. I was too busy being pissed off in a murky cave.

So we have this amazing world to explore, but almost every interesting quest arc sends you into a cave or ancient tomb. You should also notice that the environment outside of major cities is fairly sparse with living inhabitants. The excitement of exploring the world is somewhat dwarfed by the fact that you won't encounter much anything of interest, short of the occasional bandit camp or CAVE.

As a legendary game, I was expecting to interact more in the cities, do something daring and adventurous. Experience more outdoor content and battles.

Bethesda - breathtaking world and lore, breathtaking gaming experience.

Yes.

You can say lack luster for all I care but you shouldn't go around calling Skyrim breathtaking, that belongs to Dead Island.

True,from word to word.Although Skyrim is a fun game,all thing just feels simplified and dumbed down.

It feels like the devs spent a long time building this brilliant, breathtaking world, but then forgot to fill it with anything.

Really? How so?

Because most of the content is that you fetch something from a cave/abandoned fort.

Only other interaction you can have with NPCs beyond "cave fetching" is murdering them.

Because most of the content is that you fetch something from a cave/abandoned fort.

Only other interaction you can have with NPCs beyond "cave fetching" is murdering them.

Though I would say there are a large number of these, i would definately not say that they are the only thing. I've done very little of that on my thief/assassin playthrough and have had some pretty diverse and fun quests. Are there fetch quests, most defintely, but I don't think Skyrim is defined by them. There is plenty of diveristy outside of that.

It feels like the devs spent a long time building this brilliant, breathtaking world, but then forgot to fill it with anything.