Actually I have been recognized by every guard I come across most of the time. plus I had parthrunax give me a speech, Agrinir give me a speech, and a dragon swear his loyalty to me. that seems like enough recognition to me.

Right after FusRoDah'ing in front of a guard (which iirc would take normal people many many years to master) said guard says "Maybe I'm the dragonborn and I just don't know it"
...
I wish I got the comments Tale gets.

I have played 170 hours. And I've only heard the "Are you really the Dragonborn..." comment once. This was yesterday and it freaked me out, or else I would doubt that I really heard it.

Walking around in Dragonscale armor does get a comment as well, which is nice...but considering you're wearing equipment made out of a nigh-invincible terror beast that has been extinct for thousands of years, you would think that would provide a little more of evidence of your status as well.

1. the cost and time expense on a game that personally recognized you as the arch mage of winterhold with all the special priviledges that should come with it, to include being held accountable to the crimes many of the lesser intelligent Nords believe you're accountable to... adding to this your achievements as a member of the Imperial Army and your time spent in the Thieves guild as well as having slain Alduin by traveling into Sovengard and being assisted by a good number of the most amazing dragonslayers in history? I wouldn't be able to play the very glitchy and very linear game, I'm afraid. It would cost too much to develop and would be really difficult to navigate and keep straight. I prefer Skyrim for being somewhat more flexible with me, even if it means I have to bear my superstardom as a secret identity. Figure this... who wants the head of the dark brotherhood, the murderer of the Emperor to also be the savior of the tree in Whiterun, the head of the mages college and the most recognized werewolf in history because he's also the dragonborn? if everyone knew everything you'd have a lot of s'plainin to do.

2. not all of anything or anyone knows a darned thing about our characters. they're not supposed to. refer to number 1. the bards only know a few songs, the guards have a set number of things to say and most of it is rumormill and speculation.

peace... or pieces. it's always the choice when you boot up the game.

I have played 170 hours. And I've only heard the "Are you really the Dragonborn..." comment once. This was yesterday and it freaked me out, or else I would doubt that I really heard it.

I didn't want a parade. I wanted to world to actually feel changed, there's seriously not a thing that has changed after I defeated Alduin. Nothing.
And I didn't even get anything useful. Fun, a shout to summon some guy who'll keep getting in my way. Thanks, but no thanks.

There would be no extra cost. That's ridiculous. The game already recognizes when you join a faction. Recognizing that you're the leader of the faction would be no different. It's a simple script that would start running when you became leader and the older one stops running. It's nothing.

You clearly know nothing about coding.

Yes, and I'm sure you are an expert programmer. Give me a break. New Vegas has the record for the most recorded lines of dialog in any video game and they change drastically based on what you've done. But go ahead, keep making excuses for Skyrim.

It just so happens I''ve been a C# programmer for 10 years smarta$$ so don't spread nonsense on matters you don't understand.

Sure you are. That's why you can't even give an answer to the fact that NV could do it and Skyrim can't even though NV has far more dialog to keep track of. I'll answer it for you. They were lazy about it. If guards can recognize your stats, your faction, your weapons and your armor, that your dragonborn they can recognize one more thing.

Its because NV is way more linear than Skyrim. You have less freedom in NV and so the AI has less things to keep track of. Not really rocket science, even for you.

Actually NV has much, much more to keep track of. Your reputation is individually tracked by every town and every faction separately which is far more than anything in Skyrim. Skyrim doesn't even accurately track the results of the 4 factions, the MQ and the Civil War. It doesn't even bother to touch on sidequests so that's not interfering with anything. Yet the guards do track when you join a faction, your armor, weapons, etc. Your argument is that adding a line of dialog for those 6 things is more than the game can handle? Don't think so.

I get this a lot at my work. People who never wrote a single line of code in their lives come by and say "Hey I need you to include this in our software. I bet it's pretty easy to do". Guess what? It's not. There's one thing in software development called Impact anolysis, this means that everytime you change a single line of code you must anolyse what impact it might have in the whole software because every change you make might have a cascade effect.

In the end of the day this is just a computer program, a series of "ifs" and "thens" scripted to give you the illusion of a real world. Even the term Artificial Intelligence is misused here, did you know that? A real AI should be able to learn and evolve by itself, something that requires huge amount of processing and no game has and probably won't have for another decade or more.

Expecting that every NPC will react to every stone you stepped on the way there is unrealistic and if that's what you want from a video game I suggest you freeze yourself and hybernate for another 50 years.

Again though, you are dodging the question. With everything else the guards do acknowledge you honestly believe that acknowledging the outcome of the 6 main quests is impossible?