What they got right.
A. The graphics
B. The combat
C. Weapons and armor
D.The ambience and realism.
E. The enemy and wildlife variety.
F. Character customisation.

What they got wrong.
A. The interface .
B. The Perk level system. Use Oblivion as a guide.
C. The removal of Attributes. Use Oblivion as a guide.
D. The lack of a skills sheet and picture. Use Oblivion as a guide.
E. Character dialogue and interaction ,it's ok but should have been better.
F. The Marriage system
The things they got right outweigh the things they got wrong . Skyrim is a great game ,but could have been EPIC if they had made some better decisions during the building of this game.

Got wrong: G) The magic system. Removing spell creation but leaving enchantment blows my mind every day. It would also fix their obscenely poor scaling, so it's like a perfect storm of disappoint.

A. UI is fine (for me)
B. ...what? The perk system is one my favorite new features!
C. I like how they took this out, so that you didn't have to restart just because you decided to play differently. You can just play the way you want to
D. Not exactly what you're getting at...
E. I'm on PC and yeah it could be better. A lot of mis-clicks here and there
F. Yeah the marriage system is OK I guess :/

Alright, no.

Fixed.

A-Interface could have been better, but it's fine.
B-Love it.
C-Love it.
D-Love it.
E-Could have been better.... but still, they did it right, for now.
F-Haven't tried it yet.
G-Added, because it's a problem.

Perfect!

All I know is when they won awards for games, they had spell creation in them. Argue against that one. Oh and by the way, if that's your criterion for people being above criticism then here's a fact that will cause your brain to explode: Nicolas Cage has won an Oscar. Deal with that.

Character customization seems pretty lacking to me. Instead of shape control you get presets. So I can choose frankenstein eye or frankenberry eye, fabulous. They should have included sliders to control everything like in Oblivion for those with skills to make decent characters. Prefabs are for noobs. Sure the characters are better than Oblivions but no matter what you do your character has a preset. Plus you can't make an old character. They have these awesome old NPC's in the game but didn't give us options to make an old character other than "laugh lines". Not really the same tools they have in the engine. It's just like fallout, impossible to make a character that has the right look you want.

You feel they got the combat right? I disagree; it's an all new engine yet their still using the same combat system as Oblivion, which is fairly linear and repetetive. If enemy ai/behavior was better and more diverse and they had more types of enemies I would have less of an issue with the combat system... But the combat system is dated, the AI is better than Oblivion and Fallout but still needs works and I think I encounters every enemy type in the game within the first 20 hours of playing.

Alright. Make a better combat system then.

Go ahead... we're waiting.

It's better than Oblivion that was the standard i used.

I'm kinda over people making complaining topics. It's almost like people have nothing better to do.

Alluding to no one else able to do it...

Divinity 2
Two Worlds 2
Hunted

To name a few have better combat models.

That's insane. It's like saying you can't critize food unless you can make better food yourself. Or you can't be a film critic unless you're a master director.

Thats a joke right? Have you played the first two?

The third is a straight action game, the combat was the games number one priority.

What they got right. My comments are italicized.

A. The graphics
Semi-Agreed. They did a poor job with the details (blocky shadows, flaky textures, etc). But on the grand scale, it is a very pretty game.
B. The combat
Disagree for Melee. What we got was a rehash of Oblivion's melee combat with some unneeded flim-flam tossed in on the side to try and make us not notice. Magic and Archery, however, I agree.
C. Weapons and armor
Agreed
D.The ambience and realism.
Ambience, yes. Realism, no (no primary needs despite food having its own item group, upgraded weapons do not degrade back to normal, etc).
E. The enemy and wildlife variety.
Agreed
F. Character customisation.
Disagree. As Madmole said, about 2/3 of the customization options are presets, so it's extremely difficult if not impossible to get your character looking exactly the way you want him. You just need to settle for "close enough."

What they got wrong.
A. The interface.
For PC, agreed.
B. The Perk level system.
Disagree, They replace major/minor skills for determining your specialization and playstyle. The dumbing down argument is invalid here, because they effectively replaced one active-thought system with another equally engaging active-thought system (and one that is much more constant than the major/minor skills model). And this one is more forgiving than before while still allowing the people who like to plan their characters to do so.
C. The removal of Attributes.
Agreed. This was unnecessary.
D. The lack of a skills sheet and picture.
Agreed, but this could be lumped in with the Interface grievance.
E. Character dialogue and interaction ,it's ok but should have been better.
Agreed. Voice acting is flat in places and when another NPC walking by rudely interrupts you, it can cause you to miss out on certain important dialogue bits.
F. The Marriage system
No comment, haven't seen it in action yet.

Right -
Visual Design - Game world is beautiful, no doubt
Perk system - there are some issues but overall it's a huge step forward having a defined, unique character even at high levels now
Magic - I'll probably get flamed here, but I have to say they've made leaps and bounds when it comes to magic. It's certainly got issues - destruction is terrible damage I know - but we aren't just lobbing colored balls of damage at things anymore and that is a massive improvement on it's own. It's a bit bare bones and lacking in variety, but I think they've revamped it and come up with a fairly good "core" compared to previous games.
Stamina System - Almost forgot, but a major improvement over previous games.

In between -
Dialogue - Hit and miss, it's a little too Truman Show I think. You'll know what I mean if you've seen that movie, I think. The majority of NPCs seem a little too interested in the PC and are willing to give out random odd information no one would really just blurt out to a stranger.
Quests - It gets a little odd/unrealistic when half the NPCs in the game are ready to send some stranger on a dangerous quest. And some of them are just evil about it too - how many times do you hear something like "oh, I'm surprised you're still alive!" after completing them?
Factions - They feel more like long questlines rather than actual guilds. I haven't tried them all out yet though, so I'm making a judgement on limited info currently.

Wrong -
Crafting skills - I'm all for them, but implementation was poor and they're the root of many balance issues.
Combat - They made some steps forward(some mentioned above), but it's still bad. Level scaling is an issue yet again, the finishers are lackluster and can even be a nuisance, NPC AI is incredibly bad still. Movement has improved but it's also still an issue(strafing and backpedaling is too fast mainly).
PC Interface, optimization, controls - Terrible UI, poor control scheme with very limited customization, low res textures even on highest setting, doesn't recognize all my ram, etc. etc.

It's not really a complaint topic . It's more of a list of things they should change or make better in the next game, and i list of things i thought they really nocked out of the park.

Right - Damn near everything.

Wrong - It's somewhat PC-porty, mainly with UI. Could use some tweaking and fixing up to be a truely flawless game.
- Some bugs, but they always fix these and none are really gamebreaking for me.

Mount & Blade was made by 2 people and the core mechanics of the combat system were vastly superior to the one in Skyrim. The animations and models may not be as good, but Bethesda has a lot more money and a lot more people to work on stuff like that.

The archery and horseback riding was better in that, too (Not even taking into account that it had mounted combat, but I don't think that fits well into TES anyway). They also had crossbows, spears, and throwing weapons.

I'm only 12 hours into the game as working nights kills my gaming time but my only major gripe so far is the User Interface..
Sorry Bethesda, you should of kept the Oblivion style stats and inventory system.

On paper it may have looked good but with both Pc and PS3 versions I find my self grumbleing at the UI..

Minor gripe is Perks system..
In the previous two games you could do what you want but now it feels like I have to specialise

You should look at the top of your screen during character creation and go to the right a little bit.

You seem to be glossing over exactly what you say isn't there.


As for the removal of stats: I was sceptical at first, but i'm not anymore. As an 'old school RPG player' i kind of miss them, they defined your character a little more in feeling if nothing else. However, the new system works. I can still play the character i want and immerse myself as i did before, all that changed is that i don't have to look at numbers all day long anymore and worry about "efficient levelling" - Something which has been a crutch of Oblivion and Morrowind. The old system invited an extreme level of power play, the new system just lets you play.

Perks are so wildly popular with today's gamers that after having crept into nearly game now from when I first ran across them in the original Fallout, I'm afraid they're here to stay. Since the developers listened to those who complained about not getting one every level, I'm expecting games coming out next will probably offer three or four.

I pretty much agree with OP. I'm playing the hell out of this game, but it's so familiar and so reminiscent of Bethesda's Fallout games, I have the feeling I've done all this before and find it surprisingly easy to put the game down and do something else. Like post on this forum.

No joke easily TW2 and D2:DKS have better combat models, it's not even close. They actually have moves and real animated skills and such.

What they got right: They didn't use Oblivion as a guide.
What they could have done: Used Morrowind as a guide.
What they should have done: Used Daggerfall as a guide.