Firstly let me be clear - I don't hate this game. I've had 171 hours of *mostly* fun out of it but there are an awful lot of glitches and bugs too that make it pretty frustrating at times.
I could pull up my list of completed quests and cite a number of quests where I've had to consult guides and use the console to cheat my way out of bugs - but that would bore you.
One example - I currently have 3x "Collect bounty from Skald" in my list that won't go away even though I've collected the bounty. Yeah some stuff is trivial but some isn't and all of its annoying.

I never saw this number of glitches in Oblivion and I replayed that game 3 or 4 times - so my feeling is that the glitches are the result of this Random quests generating and maybe that isnt fixable?
I would also question whether this game was properly beta tested? (by people who felt they had the freedom to raise objections)
What do you think? Maybe making a game more linear and scripted IS the only way to avoid bugs and glitches.

Incidentally I also think a lot of the reviews have glossed over the faults in the game and given it an unreasonably high score - if a friend asked me "Is Skyrim worth buying?" - I'd say 'yes but be warned that it does have some pretty glaring faults' - How is it rational to give a game with so many glitches and bugs a 90% or higher score or call it GOTY material? Isn't that rewarding a lack of quality?

I've been playing for a long time and I didnt run into any glitches but I have heard of them. I think in such a big game its natural to have a few glitches here and there and overall the fun factor of the game outweighs the glitches by a lot

There is no other game more deserving then Skyrim to become Game of the Year!

I think that its definetly a candidate, we'll see how fast they are able to patch things up. Honestly, for a game so large its fairly polished. I'm glad that Bethseda is finally acknowledging its mistakes and attempting to rectify the problems. Hopefully all will be well sooner than later but once again, this game is massive, changing one line of code might lead to a domino effect etc.

I've logged around 120 hours, ran into a few glitches...non that were totally game breaking. 9.8/10, best game I've played in years. I would agree that this is GOTY material.

I'd say Skyrim won't be the game of the Year and it stills does not deserves... yet. But that's only my opinion.

I played oblivion and never cleared ALL QUESTS and ALL dungeons, but I found the most secret locations of many things and I can say for sure: Oblivion was not as bugged as this game is. The mouse issues in Skyrim are incomprehensive. If your FPS gets low, you must SPAM the mouse buttons if you want to perform an simple attack.

But let's put things clear if we may.

If you develop a game, you can't predict the bugs. If you design and create a game from scratch and never test it, it will be unplayable due to serveral bugs. Programming is not easy task either a predictable task. So bugs really occurs and it will happen always, no matter how good programmer you are.

But, of course, anything can be polished. Even the most bugged game. If the development team spend some time solving the bugs, specially now that magical resistance is all broken (I am unhappy. Alduin's breath takes 3x my health. I MUST use 3 ultimate healing potions each time he yol toor shul.

It will be GOTY because it's above and beyond most RPGs released in the last couple of years. Completely open sandbox, non linear questing, hours and hours of fun and also quite popular. Are there bugs? sure but every game has bugs. Most games don't even last 40hrs, this one seems endless.

Maybe, although it'd be a push, questionble fixing things that are just lousy design choices, somethings would take way too much to change.
For Goty? Hell no, although the title has lost more and more meaning it still should be reserved for games that bring something new and above all have outstanding quality. Bastion even though being a short game deserves it far more then this, every detail of it is well thought out, the 2 sung theme songs that combine to make the ending theme which makes sense and is just beautiful, the contrast and balance and the lyrics not even being lame and very tied to the game but to make sense within it. Not to mention by 2011 Dec 31st it will be playable without needing constant saves in case a quest breaks.

Every game has bugs? name me one company that gets away with the sheer scale and number that bethesda do time and time again, even between games of the same engine not fixing known issues and worse reintroducing ones that the previous game had patch, like they always go back to engine version 1.0. Non linear questing? your not given a choice in a meaningful way of dealing with quests most of the time and some stories don't even become quests and options to deal with it. Even then with the linear set path that can turn out in very few ways it doesn't make much of a difference in the world, sometimes even not effecting the npcs involved with the quest.

No way does this game deserve GOTY, they may have got the sales, but mostly though false promises and relying on us to think that something they bring up will be much more then it is (ie. marriage, such a shallow joke of an addition I honestly wish theyd have spent time added to something else then add this, god knows there aren't plently of other areas lacking any depth of thought and ideas, even being made to a sensible level not a skeleton version of it.)

Just a further example, Fable III was release with bugs and thier community and fans where outraged at them but the games was far more playable beginning to end then this, which has far more issues, even if your set a scale to compare the size of game fable would be miles behind the number of bugs vs number of features. Why should Bethesda be praised and even rewarded for it, I don't feel it should even be accepted, you just encouraging a lack of change.

EA does it every single year with Madden, takes months to patch it and get it right (if they even get it right at all).

Sorry but this is entirely false. Oblivion shipped with worse bugs than Skyrim and more of them. The PC version was extremely buggy and it took modders to fix the vast majority of quest bugs and world bugs that were left in the game by Bethesda. Fallout 3 had the same level of buggyness as Skyrim has now at its launch, and in fact had many litteraly game breaking issues that were impossible to work around and also had the exact same mouse control problems you point out in your post. And we know how that turned out for GOTY. Both games were made by Bethesda and both are still extremely buggy without using modder created patches for the game and its DLC's. Skyrim is just as buggy as both of them but in its defence, on the 360 its a LOT smoother and apparently more robust than compared to the previous titles.

I'm so sick of these posts. It's like the posters think they can sway the outcome of what gets GOTY. You can't. The majority of people that play Skyrim probably don't even realize the game has bugs. There are millions of people playing it, and like the same 200 people on the forums. It svcks that you are unhappy with the game. It really does.

The bugs that I have experienced are annoying, but they don't ruin my experience with the game like they obviously do for some of you.

If it is that horrible, move on. Complaining here isn't going to make it any better for you. Just don't buy TES VI.

You are not swaying public opinion with your little campaigns.

No. The Witcher 2 is deserving of Game of The Year 2011. Skyrim just isn't as polished and too many bugs... even after two patch attempts.

If Beth does something to save the game in a timely manner, I would have no problem supporting Skyrim for GOTY. Unfortunately, I'm a PS3 owner who can't play for more than half an hour without my system crashing. That kinda says "NO GOTY" to me.

You say a very truth. But I've never noticed bugs in Oblivion... Played it too much even.

But, if bethesda is really doing this to us... Why would I still paying their games? I bought this game by the honor of "They deserve it for the hard work." but now I do question it everyday. I am part of a development team here. We are starting to work togheter and we are always thinking about "Money is good but we need to conciliate always with our players. They will want to have fun playing as much as we had fun creating".

I have no doubt that this can be fixed. You're right though a lot of the bugged quests are getting bugged because of the radiant quest system. (ie Items spawn in random cave/dungeon/fort before the quest concerning that item is triggered, if you picked it up.. broken quest)
This same error also seems to influence the MQ/Civil War bug and TG/DBH questlines.
It is probably a scripting issue which is why it will take longer to fix it, but i have no doubt it will be fixed. (rember that FO:NV had similar issues, nearly all of them have been fixed)

No on to Beta Testing. Some bugs are so obvious that I doubt all side questing was tested properly, the script error which influences the issues with the random generated loot should have been noticed. As well as the fact that some quests are extremely buggy.
A small list whith sidequests (don't worry no spoilers just the questnames) which turn out buggy with normal play.
- Blood on the ice, both the errors and the quest not starting should have been noticed in testing. It is very easy to make this Quest bug out.
- The white Phial II: Sends you to an area which is also a questarea for another quest. Conflict concerns normal alchemy items being flagged as quest items. IE again very easy to spot in testing.
- Bards College: Un droppable questitems. Should have been noticed.
- All instances in which random generated content conflicts with side-quests. Unless you play very methodologically (ie no bounty jobs, no exploring/clearing out caves and playing every Questline individually ) these errors seem to be encountered by most players. (so should have come up in testing)

As for the major questlines bugging out.. Those errors seem infrequent and much harder to predict. The Civil War/MQ has a conflict which I can accept to be overlooked in testing.
Other errors like Companions not behaving correctly (stuck in dialogue, next quests not starting), Thieves Guild, Objects not appearing etc. seem to be rare.. and again can either not occur during testing or unique conditions in which does errors appear did not occur during testing.

In other words: The conflicts which cause side-quests to bug out should have been noticed during testing. Especially since it seems to be a scripting issue.

The Witcher 2 is my personal GOTY but Skyrim, as a multiplatform title, will probably come on top. I'm sure that at least the PC version will be fixed by modders.

Skyrim does deserve game of the year, even with the bugs. Just for the sheer amount of enjoyement people are getting out of the game.

I think many people who are talking badly about Skyrim and saying how Oblivion had less bugs have played Oblivion a good year or two after its release... AFTER it was fixed. Oblivion's release was terrible just like Skyrim's for some people.

It's not an excuse for bugs, but given the size of the game I'm impressed that it isn't full-on broken.