I never said I don't respect people with different opinions on skyrim's quality.
You don't have to
say that you don't respect other peoples opinions. You clearly don't. You apply a silly derogative to anyone with the gall to argue against you while making strawmen of your own. Aaaand then you go on to claim i can't possible i have any arguments because i take issue with your attitude.
All the reasoned, logical arguments in the world won't matter if the people debating aren't going into it with the right attitude. Which, clearly, you don't have.
But, withdrawing from the debate now would be silly, so let's get to it.
We will start with mods.
First up, your argument is incredibly insulting, not just to the devs but to the modders. Modders do what they do out of love for the game. No one spends hour after hour putting something in or tweaking a flawed mechanic if the base game isn't worth it. Claiming the devs are incompetent is an insult to that love and dedication. Of course, not all mod authors love the game. Some do genuinely dislike it and find it in need of serious fixing. But these are a minority.
Second, there is a difference between mod authors and a professional development studio. They both have strengths and weaknesses. That's right, one guy alone in his room at his computer has advantages over a massive studio spending millions of dollars. I hope i don't have to spend too long explaining the advantages a large studio has: structured environment, large team, deep pockets ect. But a modder has advantages too. They don't have much in the way of resources, sure, but they also aren't under the same time constraints. A modder can make a sword far more detailed then any Bethesda does and put it in the game. Because that modder doesn't have to have another three axes four daggers and ten bows to do before the 13th after which no more assets can be added. A modder can stall for as long as he wants. If his mod is delayed, people shrug and go on with their lives. If an employee is taking too long it impacts other peoples work. If it happens too much, the game gets delayed, there is much gnashing and wailing of teeth and the overall viability of the project may decline because people eventually get sick of waiting. The devs are on a schedule, they can't spend forever polishing. Another advantage modders have is that they are making additions to a finished product, not building something from scratch. This is important, man. Hindsight is 20-20. It is incredibly easy to wait for someone to release a game and then point out it's flaws. Every mistake is obvious in retrospect. But many of them probably weren't during development. On top of that, the hardest part has already been done. The base, framework of the game isn't flashy and exciting, so people ignore how important it is. A small addition to the game (a new armour or something) is much more obvious and notable. But the foundation that is built on goes ignored. A dev studio is a few hundred people working for a few years. Mod authors number in the thousands and have a theoretically infinite amount of time to work. It is inetitable that there are going to be some fantastic mods. The poor mods fade into obscurity while the great ones get shared and remembered for years.
Third, where the fuck do you think the mod community comes from? Why do games developed by Bethesda and TES series specifically have such a huge modding community? Seriously, compare them to others. The Nexus is the largest modding site i know of, some games have their own modding sites, like Saints Row, but most games rely on the Nexus for mods. Here is their game list: http://www.nexusmods.com/games/about/games/? look at the numbers. The Elder Scrolls and later Fallout games have a much higher amount of mods then others. Why is this? Is Bethesda simply incompetent, as you claim, consistently putting out games that require fixing, while a vast army of valiant volunteers rise to the challenge? Obviously not. If they weren't worth modding, they wouldn't get modded. And if they were so unworthy, they wouldn't sell on consoles at all. But Skyrim sold more on consoles then on PC, if i remember correctly. If mods are the only thing that redeems them, that wouldn't happen. But where
does this abnormally large modding community come from? Bethesda have cultivated it. They design their games to be modded, knowing that mods can offer things a professional dev studio can't. They release toolsets, and even make tutorials on it's use, they make the game as easy to mod as is reasonably possible while damn near every other dev is busy stomping on mods so they can sell DLC easier. Skyrims mod community didn't just HAPPEN.
Now that i have addressed your arguments regarding mods, lets move on to the other stuff.
Ok first things first: Was Skyrim released in an unfinished state? Well, a game breaking bug that doesn't let you finish the main storyline counts? That and a miriad of other bugs that honestly one week with 10 testers would have discovered? Yeah ... case closed.
I played Skyrim unmodded on PC at launch and experienced no game breaking bugs. I don't know what bug you are referring to, but it obviously isn't universal. Are Bethesda's games unusually buggy? Fuck yes. Every single one. But they probably spend more time testing for bugs then any other studio. Beth games have a truly ridiculous amount of interacting mechanics and moving parts, more so then most games. It is way easier to keep a streamlined, linear CoD game bug free then something like what Beth produces. But that doesn't mean their QA efforts are good enough, that's just meant to address your absurd "one week with ten testers" nonsense. Beth needs to do better......and they are. Every game they spend more time patching. Skyrim is their best effort at long term bugfixing yet. They didn't fix everything, but an improvement is an improvement.
Oh, skyrim is in a civil war between imperials and stormcloacks, and now alduin is ravaging the country-side, resurecting dragons and burning whole vilages to ash ... so where in the fuck is that? Everyone just goes about their business in their towns like nothing ever happens. Where are sieges, skirmished, guerilla raids on imperial supply convoys? Where are the burning vilages, where are the dragons terorizing the countryside? Oh these guys flying circles above uninhabited forests? ... Or sitting their asses all day on some rock in the middle of nowhere? Suuuuuuure ... I can feel the terror of these ancient beeing beeing brought back to life. And I completly buy the civil war, what with all the non-existant discusions or fights in the street, the lack of any skirmishes or guerrila raids or war parties walking the land ...
Dragons DO actually attack towns and settlements, all the damn time. It never ends well for them when they attack the college, i can tell you. Small war parties DO patrol the roads, and i have found some engaged in battle with each other. Not often, certainly and perhaps not enough, but it happens. Cities change hands, and there are changes within them to reflect that (Heimskarr being jailed if the Imperials take Whiterun, the shrine of Talos being restored if the Stormcloaks take Solitude, to quickly name two off the top of my head) again, perhaps not enough but it is there.
Skyrim is the greatest RPG i have ever played, and not because of stats and loot, but because it has a great deal of incredible roleplaying opportunities (and you can't roleplay in a Bethesda game the way you do in a BioWare game).
On to what I think of Skyrim? Bland. It's bland. Not bad, not good, just bland. It lacks any form of imersion, of narative weight. It talks a great deal about interesting and cataclysmic events, about deep lore and massive conflicts ... and it delivers nothing. SHOW DON'T TELL needs to be labeled on each workdesk at bethesda.
Immersion is relative. I find Skyrim to be the most immersive game i have ever played. It delivered everything it promised for me. You find it bland. I find it to have the greatest variety of interacting concepts and mechanics of any game i have ever played. Skyrim's strength is that it doesn't have a strength. The game has an extremely broad design focus.
The wide variety of Skyrim ensures that every mechanic within it has been done better by a dozen games. Dark Souls Melee combat is better, Magicka's magic combat is better, Thief's stealth is better, Mass Effects characters are better, The Sim's home building is better. Wow, Skyrim sure is shaping up to be a bland and shitty game. It has no strength, no stand out. Some people, like you, find that bland and worthless. Ok. Some people, like me, find that the broad focus means the game always has something interesting to do. The games i just listed that beat Skyrim in a specific category did so by focusing in that category more then Skyrim ever did. They are better, but more narrow. When i get bored of Dark Souls combat, i stop playing Dark Souls. When i get bored of Skyrims combat, i build another wing on my manor play hide and seek with my daughter and bake for a while. When i get bored of Magicka's magical combat, i stop playing. When i get bored of Skyrim's magical combat, i arrange my books on their shelves listen to a bard make an item or two and rearrange my trophies. Skyrim is incredibly flexible, whatever mood i am in there is content.
This doesn't mean Skyrim is the greatest game ever. Just that i find a great deal of worth in it even if it isn't for you. But im sure im just a "fan-but boy".
