Most games from my experience have far more of a linear story line to the gameplay, particularly in the beginning, and Helgen is very very short compared to breaking out of Oblivion's prison for instance (which you did acknowledge) so I suppose it's a much shorter learning curve, you're correct on that. Though it only explores the basics and doesn't go into smithing or riding horses or shouts or soul gems or what is effective against different beasts unless you happen to find the right people/trainer for that later on, which a lot of games just hand feed you. (Though if you decide to go straight for the Civil War quests, it does help. Like the Blacksmith ready to help teach you once you reach Riverwood).

Shouts get explained to you as part of the main quest; you won't even be able to use them until you advance enough along the main quest and the game also naturally draws the player's attention to smithing even if you don't talk to Alvor - when you first enter Whiterun there's people hassling Adrienne which catches the player's attention. Skyrim doesn't hand feed you anything because it's not complicated and soul gems and beast effectiveness stuff is distilled to the player on loading screen tooltips which is far more likely to be where players learn about them. So is the main quest just an extended tutorial then?

Skyrim is not a deep game so there isn't exactly a lot to teach the player fundamentally. Helgen teaches you how to open shit, equip shit, swing a weapon, fling a spell, pick locks, sneak, fight things, that oil can be set on fire, and how doing these things increases the experience bar. It even gives you a bow rather than letting the player find one in order to have a stealth tutorial at the end. And this is maybe five minutes. Ten tops. By the time you leave Helgen you're pretty much primed for everything the game will throw at you with only the crafting left to discover; and considering crafting is just literally clicking on things it's not difficult.

Oblivion doesn't teach you about its spellcrafting systems in the tutorial and Morrowind barely teaches you how to walk before you're tasked with finding Caius Cosades without so much as a clue as to what the fuck a Balmora is.

Skyrim is a much shallower experience because everything has been streamlined down to the basics of the basic. Where before you could fuck yourself over by creating a class focused on the shittiest weapon types or skill, now you can't because there's no specific class and instead it's a game built around being able to do everything with absolutely no draw back or consequence. Granted the average player won't get everything unlocked but the system in place is just the definition of simplicity.

Simple doesn't necessarily mean bad, of course, but Skyrim makes leveling up feel boring and encourages things like smith spamming iron daggers just to break the game as soon as possible.

Yes it does. You can assassinate him with a well placed bowshot. You can sneak in and shout him off the walls to fall to his death. You can be open about it in combat. You can cast a spell to summon something that wreaks havoc in the base to distract him or the guards. It takes multiple playthroughs to get tired of it for many. Particularly if you've explored everything and the newly randomized encounters or even set enemies seem new the 2nd or 3rd time because...well you've explored everything and can't remember half of it. (Saw the rest of your section of the post, I just replied and didn't quote the rest because it might confuse me/you).

No it doesn't. You're still going through the same motions with the same dungeon layouts. Going to Embershard Mine won't be a different experience the second time around just like going through Deepwood Redoubt won't be different because it'll still have Forsworn. That's because places like that are locations that can be pegged for the radiant quests which we've gone into. If all it takes is a different weapon for you to not think the same exact layout with the same exact enemy type (with higher gear depending on level) is repetitive and dull then more power to you. But going through the same motions only this time the weapon is a Bound Sword instead of an Elven Sword or stealth archery instead of destruction magic is just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Not true. There isn't 'any game' that has those kinds of numbers or statistics. And even taking away mods, it would still be more played than most games out there.

I'm not so sure about that. If your only metric is Steam but there are far more popular and more played games out there. MOBAs, for instance. You can't make this claim because there's no way of tracking this information. And I guarantee that most people playing the game are doing so modded.

And re-releasing it on other platforms let's people play it...because they want to. Because they like it. There are only a handful of games in the world that could claim to be as well sold or as frequently played as Skyrim.

There are ten games that can claim to be as well sold as Skyrim. Well, eleven technically. Seven of them are Nintendo games. The others are multiplatform. Most top selling games are. But amount sold doesn't mean every single copy is still being played nor does it automatically mean quality. Again, some people haven't played it and the re-release of it was largely for Bethesda showing off mods on console. Even Bethesda knows that mods are keeping the game alive. Get back to me in November or at the end of the year if Skyrim Switch rates at the top of the sales charts.

But Halo is constricted by levels (that have no different biomes or random enemies and encounters) and actual static dialogue, with no open ended anything, with even more limited game mechanics that in turn limits the scenarios in which you beat it, and without a myriad of different things an RPG has.

Halo isn't an RPG. But here are just some of the effects you can do to make the campaign different:

-AI become more observant, noticing even active camouflage, shadows, the sound of reloading or drawing a weapon, footsteps, etc. They also have better accuracy and are much less likely to kill themselves or their teammates with explosive weapons.

-Your HUD becomes invisible; you cannot see your weapon, body, shields, ammunition, motion tracker, or use your flashlight.

-All enemies are permanently camouflaged.

-Your shield does not recharge automatically. Your shield only recharges when you kill something with a melee attack with anything but the Energy Sword.

-All enemies are promoted to the highest available ranks.

-Enemies always go berserk, always dive out of the way, and never flee.

All of which are more interesting and game changing than anything Skyrim brings to the table.

However you're saying it's a bad game through reasoning I think you can use for a lot of different things to make them sound bad.

Every game isn't judged on the same merits.

From your entire set of posts, I can tell that you don't find Skyrim immersive, which is what is needed in order to enjoy a game. A lot of people find it very immersive.

Every time I was starting to get immersed, something in the game would take me right back out, be it the repeated inconsequential dialog, the technical issues, or how little anything changed as I progressed. Even Todd Howard agrees there.

I think if you look at our worlds and our environments, they're really rewarding. I think on the character side, how the NPCs react to you is still not quite where we want it to be.

Source

You have approached Skyrim with an "A+B=C" kind of outlook, when every game can be reduced to that and seem dull. You might be serious and if you don't find it immersive, then that's your right. But a lot of internet trolls use that kind of logic to just shit on a game to be alternative.

I approached Skyrim with optimism and excitement even after being upset with Fallout 3 in a lot of ways. I don't even hate the game. I bought two copies of it, one on Xbox 360 and the other on PC which I have about 330 hours in. Believe me when I say that I'm not just shitting on the game to be some trolling contrarian. I can understand why people like it. I can understand why I enjoyed it back in 2011 and increasingly less so as I played it again over time. I can even understand why I can't bring myself to delete it from my Steam library even though I have no desire to play it ever again.

Skyrim is a fundamentally flawed and broken game that I don't like. It's not all bad. There's good in it and for some people the flaws are either not as readily apparent or are easily overlooked. I'm not those people.

I wouldn't get this fucking deep about a game I hated. But I would get this deep about a game I so, so, so wished was better. Bad games and great games are boring to talk about like this.

I still don't completely understand exactly why we're talking about Bethesda as a whole, but I will say yes. Bethesda brags about things in the same way Fable famously bragged all those years about it's 'freedom/realstic world' gameplay, they leave bugs, and use some gimmicks to distract players. Totally. I really enjoy Bethesda games but I'm not a blind follower of them.

We're talking about Bethesda because I want it all to burn and I just want them to publish DOOM sequels until my eyes bleed and because they're a developer that I feel like gets a free pass on a lot of things i.e. Fallout 4.

Also I've not played No Man's Sky. (Googles). Damn it got a 5/10 on steam, and at best 7/10 everywhere else.

No Man's Sky was an overambitious game from an indie dev that got killed by its own hype. It promised everything and delivered anything but and yet it still has its small bunch of supporters. Like Skyrim, No Man's Sky is all about exploration; unlike Skyrim the exploration is basically all No Man's Sky has and it takes even less to realize how shallow NMS is.

If Skyrim came out today as it did in 2011 I don't think it would get the same praise, especially not in the wake of things like The Witcher 3 or even Dragon Age: Inquisition (which I think is a better game than Skyrim but is still like...not so good).

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I've started to feel guilty we/I took a quaint thread and turned it into TL'DR zone so I'll reply this way and probably just leave it at that after this. (Damn conscience)

Point 1: Agreed it's not a very deep game. Though I'd say there are aspects you still need to learn. I spent a few Playthroughs as an Argonian Ranger or Warrior and it wasn't until my 3rd playthrough I even used a Soulgem so I figured those out on my own lol.

Point 2: I think my quote above your point disproved your follow up. But agree to disagree there.

Point 3: Yup, Halo is not an RPG and those are relatively ok suggestions for Halo.

Point 4: Every game isn't judged on the same merits, yes. But I feel like you can use your logic on a lot of things to make it sound bad regardless. And while you went into Skyrim with rose colored glasses, I don't see how you can go from that to this unless you yourself changed as a person on how you look at games fundamentally.

Point 5: Yup, agreed. Skyrim has flaws and like I said, it's our outlooks on the game that makes it worthwhile or not worthwhile to play it.

Point 6: Oh, well Bethesda better get on that shiet.

No Man's Sky: I've had some friends play it but I can see that from the reviews. Also I kinda think DA: I did worse than Skyrim on most things, now that you mentioned it. I was literally thinking of it the entire time I was talking/thinking about there being games with more static dialogue and worse learning curves.
@Fabricant451

And while you went into Skyrim with rose colored glasses, I don't see how you can go from that to this unless you yourself changed as a person on how you look at games fundamentally.

I went into Skyrim with the same attitude I go into any game I play. I don't want games to be bad. I want them to be good. It's really easy to see how someone can change their opinion in light of new experiences or evidence. In 2011 I was almost out of college and I spent like all of Thanksgiving break and winter holiday playing it. But it didn't really stick with me then apart from "Yeah I guess it's good?" I can play a game like Chrono Trigger today and still have the same exuberance as I did in 1995. I can play Final Fantasy 8 and still enjoy every minute of it even with its super specific issues and flaws. I can't say the same for Skyrim. It's not that I changed. It's that Skyrim refused to change enough.

You can't go home again, kinsman.

<Snipped quote by POOHEAD189>

I went into Skyrim with the same attitude I go into any game I play. I don't want games to be bad. I want them to be good. It's really easy to see how someone can change their opinion in light of new experiences or evidence. In 2011 I was almost out of college and I spent like all of Thanksgiving break and winter holiday playing it. But it didn't really stick with me then apart from "Yeah I guess it's good?" I can play a game like Chrono Trigger today and still have the same exuberance as I did in 1995. I can play Final Fantasy 8 and still enjoy every minute of it even with its super specific issues and flaws. I can't say the same for Skyrim. It's not that I changed. It's that Skyrim refused didn't change enough.

You can't go home again, kinsman.

Oh, I think I misread then. I thought you wrote that you thought it was great from the get-go but then changed, rather than you being excited and thinking it somewhat lackluster compared to what you hoped later.

Now, for the thread!

I think the main thing I'd change (which various mods have anyway) is the character designs. I generally always play beast races because it's hard for them to not look badass. Whereas every Man or Mer I play looks gnarled and leather faced, or just derpy.

Make the combat Not shit for a start...