Dont get me wrong, I enjoy Skyrim.
Good game? Yes.
Great? Possibly.
Perfect? Nope.

Disclaimer: The following contains spoilers and my own opinions. My opinions may differ from yours. This doesn't mean don't voice your opinions, just don't flame mine. I also do not want to hear about game-breaking bugs or glitches, or anything else that should be in http://www.gamesas.com/forum/179-skyrim-hardware-and-software-issues-subforums/.

I think Dragonrend shout should work differently. Right now, it forces the dragon to land, eventually. Its got to find a nice landing space first. Personally, I think Dragonrend should make the dragon temporary lose the ability to fly, meaning it crashes to the ground, struggles to get up for a few seconds, then is grounded until Dragonrend wears off. Just seems more like how I envisioned it upon learning of it at Alduin's Wall.

The Skeleton Key. I personally hate how it looks. I was more than happy to return it asap. Secondly, I dont like how it works. I would rather see it work more like a 'key' than a 'lockpick'. No minigame, no lockpicking leveling, just select the chest or door and its open.

Destruction Magic, a branch of magic dedicated solely to destroying what lies in you path. Seems like a weapon to me. A weapon with no major damage increase perk like Archery, One- and Two-Handed. Or base damage increase for having a higher level. Also, no spell making, personally I found it funny to cast a touch spell on someone, where it turned them invisible, paralyzed them, and slowly killed them.

I can collect bread, cabbage, various meats, and various cheeses, yet I can not, for the life of me, figure out how to combine them into a single edible food.

From what I've seen, there's no follow-up to the events in the Twilight Sepulcher, I wonder what you would think of this:

• Starts as a random encounter, only available during the night. You encounter a Nightengale Shade who is non-hostile and starts dialog with you when you get close. He tells you that the Twilight Sepulcher is under attack and reminds you that it is your duty to defend it. Begins Side Quest: Defend the Sepulcher.
  
• First Objective: Equip your Nightengale Armor. If you've lost or sold your old ones, you can reactivate the armor stone in Nightengale Hall for a new set. (To avoid the Thieves Guild armor upgrade crap) The marker will point to both the stone, and the whereabouts of your current set. A new set is advised, as it will be re-leveled to your current level. You are allowed to remove it after this, if you wish.
  
• Second Objective: Meet with Karliah and Brynjolf. After equipping your Nightengale armor, you meet with Karliah and Brynjolf to quickly formulate a battle strategy. You choose to either defend the Sepulcher from the inside, where you face a greater number of weaker enemies, or ambush them outside, where they are fewer but stronger. Once you decide, you have to stick with it.
  
• Third Objective: Defend the Sepulcher.
  
  • You finally learn who the attackers are, the Vigilants of Stendarr.
    
  • Defending from the inside would work like a battle during the Civil War quests, where it'll keep track of the percent of enemies left. Karliah and Brynjolf will be fighting alongside you. I usually choose Agent of Strife for myself, so Karliah would be the Agent of Shadow, Brynjolf the Agent of Subterfuge. (If you chose Shadow, then Karliah would be Strife. If you chose Subterfuge, then Brynjolf is Strife.) For me, Karliah would be invisible and have sneak attack criticals with every shot, while Brynjolf would cause a mass frenzy and have them turning on eachother. Because you are inside the Sepulcher, no bounty is assigned.
    
  • Ambushing would have a set number of enemies with markers over their heads. Stealth attacks would be your best bet, but charging in could work if you're strong enough. Karliah and Brynjolf chose to take up positions on the inside, in case any get past you (also, so you can sneak around easier). The only way to get a bounty this way is if you are both detected and not wearing your Nightengale armor, as the hood includes a face mask.
• Final Objective: Meet with Karliah and Brynjolf. Regardless of your strategy, Brynjolf will comment about how being a Nightengale is certainly riskier, but also exciting, while Karliah comments that Nocturnal, while not showing it, is pleased at how they've done their duty. (Choosing the Ambush option would mean that you have to enter the Sepulcher to talk with them, and there would be a few dead Vigilants inside, so you wouldn't think that you were the only one doing the dirty work.)
  
• Final note, the quest would end, but you can start it again if you find the Nightengale Shade in another random encounter.

Why can't we forge arrows? I have thought of a recipe, it would also be available for all material types, unlocked when you take the corrosponding perk. My recipe, technically would be 2 recipes due to the final component: (Primary Ingot) + Leather Strips + Firewood + (Hagraven or Hawk) Feathers = 25 Arrows. Example: Refined Malachite + Leather Strips + Firewood + Hawk Feathers = 25 Glass Arrows. You get the idea. I'm not going to list them all, unless someone really wants me to, and that would likly be more of a private message thing than a post or topic.

My own gripe is not really about game design, as it is about the billion bugs in the game. For a PC player
it would just be irritating; For those of us on consoles it is play stopping,

"Oh hey, LOD is laying
dead on the streets of Falkreath where he has been since I entered it at level 20 or something, whereupon
a dragon fell on my head and started attacking everyone. 20 levels later, when trying to finish the last of
my 3 achievements..."



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Easy and what I thought was intuitive:

You go to the cooking pot in your house, in a jarl's house, in some dude's house, in a forsworn camp, in a dungeon (usually they are on a spit, in front of a fire)

Activate cooking pot (or something like that.)


Shows a list of what you CAN MAKE, based upon the food YOU HAVE.



The the more you have, the most you can make. I do something similar to what I do with my alchemy ingredients:

I use the house in markarth. I stuff all the food I get anywhere in the "mead barrel" in the alchemy room. I stuff all my alchemy
ingredients into the barrel next to it. Then If I want to make potions I loot all the alchemy stuff to make it. If I want to make food, I loot
ALL the food at once then go over to the fire in my house with the cooking pot.

Some stuff is supposed to be good for stats? I think one is a kind of fondue (so yeah, saving cheese would be good?)

I use the meed barrel for my wine and meed collection.. the barrel next to it for my food and the satchel on the stool in the same room for all my regents

I honestly don't have any major gripes. I don't like the armor - but the CK + modders will fix that. I'd like a house OUTSIDE of cities - but the CK + modders will fix that. *shrug* I don't have any bugs.

Love this game....

Good game? Yes.
Great? for me yes I love it
Perfect? No such game exists

I love skyrim. I played it 70+ hours on the Xbox before moving over the the PC (for the mods and CK) never had on quest stopping glitch, though I have played TES games for a long time so I know to save often just in case. I have played another 89 hours on the PC and still have yet to run into and game stopping bugs. The only single bug I have run into at all is the thane of Riften bug. I did use the console to fix that. I have to agree with Serethil when it comes to the armors, but modders have taken care of my issues with that and I am looking forward to see what i can do with the CK.

Great game: yes.

My main complaints are:
1) bugs
2) not being able to drop quests (for two reasons):
a - related to bugs: sometimes dropping and restarting a quest will correct or circumvent bugs
b - I'm one that likes to have a clean journal or at least one that's not gummed up with quests I'll never do.
3) We can't put cute/$lutty clothes on our wives.
4) Our followers won't constantly wear the badass armor we make for/give them.

Edited for usage.

If your wife opens up a shop, just put new armor on her. When she equips it, buy her old armor. When she's in your house, she won't be wearing much of anything.

Personally, I hate the fact that I can't make my own OP spells anymore, yet I can make a bow that could one-shot a dragon from across the map.

I married Syljga - she's a miner NPC from Shor's Stone (I think that's the village). She's not a fighting follower - will that still work?

Edit: I know there's a glitch for her wherein you can pickpocket her clothes and she'll remain in her underwear, but:
1) I don't have the Pickpocket skill/perk for it.
2) I really just want her to wear the Tavern Clothes not walk aournd in her underwear.

I suppose there's something to be said for attire, although I feel my wife should be fully prepared and equipped to spar with me at a moment's notice. And by "prepared," I mean naked.

The Honeyside house in riften that u can buy has an access that is outside the city so u dont have togo into riften to get into ur house.

Ayup. I get it on all my toons now. But I still want to "live" in the wilderness. Like Froki does.... (yes, there's a mod that puts a house near his shack, but it's buggier right now - for me - than an anthill, even though I use the same guy's mod for smithy in the Honeyside basemant.)

Nice.

Mediocre dialogue, boring characters. Hollow, dull environment (though it's still damn beautiful)

That's about it. The game is otherwise very well done.

I agree, I am going to wait awhile and get it on PC later with the CK. I have played 3 characters and almost 400+ hours and I don't want to burn myself out on the game. I would love to have nice farm/horse ranch next to a lake with a fishing mod. Right now I just restarted ME2, so I can complete my character to wait for ME3 soon. I hope the h**l Bioware doesn't kill it like they did with Dragon Age series, the sequel svcked hard....

[censored] dialogues and [censored] writing, so much handholding it's almost a joke, perk system is mediocre at best, no stats, general dumbing down of everything, blatant removal of some features no doubt to be included later as a paid DLC and a general cheapness of it all not counting the visuals.

The biggest thing that drives me crazy is that I like to explore, so often Ill come across a cave or mine that Ill clear out and loot everything then find a quest item that I cant remove from my inventory. Then when I find the quest that it belongs to, I cant finish the quest because it tells me that I havent cleared out the place yet!! I get stuck with unwanted item in my inventory and unwanted quest clogging up my journal.

You can change your wife's clothes into something a little [censored]ty if they are also a follower. I upgraded some Forsworn armor up to legendary. (Had to have my smithing at 100, a smithing necklace, smithing ring, smithing gaunlets, and an elixer of smithing)
Lydia never looked so hot. And with the Armor, I used upgraded leather boots with hide bracers. All upgraded to Legendary. I also gave her a ebony greatsword do that she wouldn't always carry her shield around or have that big bulky bow and arrows on her back.

Give it a try. It should work on all your girl housecarls.

My wife isn't a follower. I'm pretty sure I gave Lydia better armor (I know I have with Mjoll - not a housecarl I know, but I figure all followers are controlled by the same scripting except their 'patrol' paths.), but followers always seem to put their stuff back on after you dismiss them and leave the zone (cell?). Hopefully this will be addressed in the next patch.

Inventory bugs, especially on the console. There's items that vanish into your inventory, becoming inaccessible, while still taking up weight. My character is currently carrying 6 pounds of who knows what while stark naked because of this. Nearly as annoying are bugged quests which don't properly mark quest items as droppable when complete. I'm looking at you, Bard's College Quests.

Damn, he must be popular with the ladies.

My main gripe has to be the terrible follower AI. Lydia is a good example of why it's broken. I'll spot a pressure plate in some dungeon and walk around it. I would be hoping Lydia would also walk were I walked. But no, she treads on the plate and gets nailed by the trap. Take those swinging blades. After I get through unhurt because I work on my timing and sprint through, she blunders in, gets knocked down, gets up, gets knocked down, gets up, gets knocked down, gets up, gets knocked down, &c. I guess she is clueless about timing and sprinting. She would be dead only I made her immortal. Take the swinging gate trap. I'll walk wide of the pressure plate and breeze through that section. Lydia will take a different track right over that pressure plate and get nailed every time. Why don't followers walk in the PC's foot prints? No, their AI tells them their chosen path is smarter. Rubbish. I rarely take Lydia any more because she is such a suicidal nuisance.

Are you talking about the spinning ones in the Dwemer ruins? Wow, even I've never tripped those. Hell, the first Dwemer ruin I went into I noticed the huge track in the floor and said to myself, "This ain't an aircraft carrier so that's not for a steam catapult - nothing beneficial will travel along that thing." FWIW: I would also avoid a steam catapult.

Edited for grammar.

how did u make lydia immortal? are u on the pc or console?

Making anybody a follower makes them immortal, more or less. Excluding you killing them or stuff like poison.

I want the pc version of Skyrim for this reason. I want the CK and some good mods.