I don't understand that. I'm not a game developer.

I do understand that Bethesda is a AAA company with a massive budget. I also understand that within the 15 years Morrowind's engine has been used, literally hundreds of other engines have been updated several times over.

I know that Bethesda is capable of this, but simply doesn't do it because they know we'll buy the game anyway, and therefore it's not worth the time / money / resources.

You have to buy the right to use all those other engines, and that alone can not be pretty, and a lot of their money goes to making such HUGE game worlds. Yeah, they COULD have made a new one or bought one and edited it for their own use, but you would then have to wait a lot longer for a game that might or might not have the same amount of stuff.

Are you trying to say that the way vendors ' inventory works is hard-coded into the engine? I'm not a game dev either, but I've got a little bit of programming and software design background, and I find it difficult to believe it would be set up that way, or that it couldn't be changed with relative ease using a workaround.

well, no, that is a game design decision, one that was done on purpose and is unlikely to change. You can disagree with their reasoning (not wanting people to abuse it), but it is their reasoning.

I was talking in general, since there have been some complaints that people have that ARE engine-based and should have not been expected to change.

I think you're misunderstanding. Many of these companies, some with smaller budgets than Bethesda, create their own engines. Also, Bethesda has more than enough money to buy access to a better engine if they didn't want to create their own. Bethesda is not a small company anymore. They have millions of dollars at their disposal and have access to the best engineers in the industry.

Their only excuse is that they know we will buy the game regardless. They know their current engine is easily moddable, and even though they could invest the time money and resources necessary to create a new one that's just as easily moddable, they don't see the point despite the current engine being 15 years old and being pushed to its absolute limits.

If you're not having issues with your game, then that's great! But let's not pretend that a lot of the complaints against Fallout 4 aren't coming from a very real place, with crashes to desktop, people being forced to play in windowed mode in order for the game to function, framerate being tied to simulation speed, incredibly poor AI, the inability for many people to make a second character without the game crashing, and numerous other problems.

Bethesda allows this to happen. They're a very capable and lucrative company. This is their choice.

The thing is a lot of people are now asking the question, should we stop giving Bethesda a pass on all this stuff?

It's been a valid criticism for years now. Unity, the generic $1,000 engine for indie games, now looks better than Fallout does https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYBEndFphik

Bethesda seems to have no qualms about ignoring it like they do every other valid criticism, because everyone keeps buying their games no matter what's in it. So why should they? Can't blame them really. If I put out game after game with something people said svcked and yet kept getting more and more sales I'd proably ignore the complaints too.