So far I agree with Jasede and Twinfalls, not that it's relevant from a 2010 member, also pardon my English.
It looks like a agenda, right now from people that:
a)never played the game and never would
b)not just abused the smithing/mechanic ,but failed at grasping perks distribution,and distributed 10 perks in smiting.
Class:Fail warior:
100 smithing up to Dedric,He never went anywhere, He didn't explore anything, went straight from Riverwood maybe after a minor quest or two to Whiterun.
He never encountered even a basic bandit , a troll, or another Dragon , He's cool and Has Dragon Plate Armor.
Fail warrior wears Dragon Armor and a sword that does maybe 20 dmg.
He has problems however with money, ore, soul gems, souls, ingredients and pretty much everything.
So He crafts more , levels up more, but now He can pay for training a few points in say- one -handed. Mostly He's cheating carry weight now because He needs money.
After training one -handed He goes to a dungeon, meanwhile the Draugrs are Restless, Thrall , and a few Scorges for good measure. None of them was crafting daggers and leveled up in one major skills , their skills went up in all skills, sword 0ne-two handed , archery, block...
Fail warrior goes back and crafts even more to pay for training in say-block, He pays for training , selling the high end items gave Him a few levels more however because of speech and enchant .
He enters the nearest cave, the Draugr are now Wight, Scourge and Overlord , fail warrior goes back somewhere to craft even more because the Draugr's have all their skills up, so fail warrior crafts more items to pay for training in say -conjuration or whatever. And so fail warrior....
Class :Half way decent warrior
He wandered slowly around, killing a few things, His blocking ,armor , one handed skill went up altogether - yay- 25 in one handed, killed a few wolves , a few bandits.entered a mine nearby a gathered a few samples of ore and pelts . He gets Lydia the Late , improves Her Sword/Armor and His own weapon and armor, but doesn't craft 150 daggers , in a cave nearby He found a decent bow for Her,the end Draugr- just one was Restless, She was able to deal sufficient damage to Him and half-way decent warrior came out with maybe 100 gold+the quest reward , now He can put a enchant on Him self and Her maybe a fortify archery , and be good for a few levels of exploration.
The above is exaggerated there are still places the player shouldn't be, there are caves that don't level lot, there are those that do, just picked up Orcish armor in a cave that previously had only steel. After lots of testing now playing pure mage, I'm not much of a melee type and having lots of fun.
So the game is exploitable , like nearly every RPG I played, and it has problems, technical problems that directly affect skill mechanics, bugs bigger and smaller but nothing that isn't fixable or broken in terms of gameplay mechanics , unkillable monsters for example without reloading are bugs .
When someone gets 2 blades of woe, both- the mask of Clavicus Ville and the axe , than its not a exploit of game mechanics it's a abuse of broken quest mechanics that are not even remotely meant to be there like that. Jumping in Morrowind to get acrobatics high is a mechanics exploit. Abusing bugs is not.
Fail stealth goes around and casts muffle , adds items via console , adds gold via console and suddenly has high illusion and sneak, he can magically open master locks without investing in lock picking why would He :
tilde, clicky on door/ chest type - unlock -easy as pie, but He can decapitate people, and make You tube videos
The game is good for a focused player, a player that wants to play a focused class, a Dedric smiting pure mage -shouldn't be even taken into consideration ,and mage can do smithing if He wants, but after lots of work in the game world-the unnecessary thing like properly leveling up and exploring. Everything can be found including Dragon Armor not to mention that the hunting for Dedric is more fun then.
A Illusion focused thief ,casting right behind the character he's trying to rob without the silent casting perk -amazing,why even have a Illusion focused thief wearing light armor, when a Illusion focused stealth character should wear clothes.
So proper usage of major skills is important , choosing preferences and sticking to them makes the game enjoyable.
I will not compare the game with Morrowind, my absolute fanboyism of the game is preventing me from doing so, but the game
is very good so far.
Personal positives:
Quest randomization, NPC randomization, Bethesda's ability to deduce the need for "love in the detail"(cheesy I know),some choices feeling major nearly eradicating a settlement with two quest lines, the Dark brotherhood-the other option.
Non combat skill checks, persuade, Lore, intimidate , faction checks , some minor, but good thing they are there, level requirements for some quests , NPC's knowing everything lolz inducing:
Heavily encumbered and moving in snail tempo :
"You carry lots of junk around, maybe visit Arnleif and Sons Trading Company," Generally the Radiant AI being very aware,small things like finding a certain Graybeard
shouting from the top of the monastery and shacking a entire mountain, plenty of potential for focused players with the factions. Things like fishing and wood hacking making sense for potions and money even if the system is still wearing diapers .
Improved animations,VA, character creation, and texturing, dungeons that are having a great vibe within the limits of a sandbox .Giving 1 gold to beggar and getting a+ 10 speech boost...
Some truly great quests one in the Mage guild for Morrowind fans ,Dragons and Dragon shouts.
The shouts are so helpful that its not even fun surrounded:Is ,Wurl or Fus Roh Dah and enjoying the emptiness and time for preparation.
The main antagonists starting with T being a faction that is ignored now but has lots of potential, great books, and miscellaneous quests that are worth doing because the reward is sometimes a skill point and a interesting location not accessible without the quest.
General quest layout is good , giving a very important thing to me -freedom, being generally well written but lacking scale or
positive quantity.
Combat is fun, not complex but difficult and interesting, in many cases dependent on proper preparation and Companion management.
Personal negatives:
Removal of some skills like blunt , balance problems in destruction, minor, hitting the player between 27-31 level but getting better later.
Lack of Lore bombs , Oblivion's problem , lack of dialogue and quest writing , lack of faction specific choice variety, being forced to be either evil or ignorant at moments .
General problem of Dovakhiin is a errand boy at moments, not because of the quests but because of the lack of reactivity from quest givers.
So the game is not Morrowind , but Morrowind dint have the amount of VA that cost money, plus the foreign language translation again with VA that per translated written word costs 1 $ + paying the foreign VA's. And even Morrowind was sometimes lacking in the reactivity department but still the stupid things in it :
"I haven't seen a Breton in such a grand outfit i quite some time,"pointless, predictable but still great and such thing being there, its great to show that someone was arsed back then and was arsed now to implement such things.
The dire need for the return of Unarmed skill in proper manner ....
So pardon the long post, and for the tl;dr people I like the game so far, not like Morrowind which I replayed 2 days before Skyrim came out , and did the same for Oblivion back then, the shock that Oblivion without Knights of The Nine and SI created didn't occur with Skyrim , I see that as a good thing, maybe I'm just getting casual and the aging process lowered my standards.