Consistantly over the whole series. Have to be bugs/technical support. Not that many games companies are any better and some are a lot worse.

I don't like their dull character animations, crashing engine and lack of cinematic atmosphere.

If i were todd, i'd take the TES team to bioware for a day and have the mass effect team spank their butts.



You could be right about storyline but in terms of realism and the epicness, mass effect is by far ahead of any tes or fallout games released so far. i'm talking about constanly changing camera angles in conversations, cinematics starting at some certain important points, hearing your character's voice.... these things make mass effect so distinctively enjoyable game than oblivion/fo3/fnv. (well they do for me at least)

EDIT: Just to compare the animation quality between Mass Effect 2 and Bethesda Softworks' latest game FO3. Leave your character in Fallout 3 and watch what he does, absolutely nothing! He doesn't move a muscle, except for his eyes. But in Mass Effect 2 Shepherd acts just like people, checks his left and right, stretches his legs and arms occasionally, shows potential behaviour of being bored because of waiting.

Honestly the only thing I hate about Bethesda' games are the bugs. Especially when they refuse to fix important ones like on the 360 and PS3 where you can't use a console to fix it yourself. But other then that I think they make some of the best games in the world! It's really a shame more companies don't make creative free-roaming games like Bethesda does.

I see alot of people pick story line, but I think story line is just fine the way they do it, any stronger and the story would require the game to be somewhat linear when doing the story line stuff and i want non linear as much as possible... i think that they could add even more side storys without linear progression hampering tho... for me mainly better visuals with majics and better animations overall along with some additions to weapons like thrown spears and staffs again

I couldn't disagree more. BW makes good characters but their games are always so, well, dull and lifeless. They are so linear and focused, nah, give me a good old Beth game any day. If I want to watch a movie, I'll go play a BW game. If I want to go experience a new world, I'll go play a Beth game.

With different games, it's been different gripes. However, if you look at the TES series going back to Arena, I think the biggest concern I have is the direction of the series. Instead of becoming more in depth, it becomes more streamlined. Instead of building on the positives, like skills, levelling and auto scaling to the PC, they do away with such things. I guess they are marketing to a different type of person, but I just wish they'd go back to what made Arena and DF so addictive. The graphics have certainly improved as graphics and engines have evolved, but the quality of the game has gone down IMHO. They just don't have heart and soul anymore. They look pretty though, for whatever that's worth.

Oooh, tough to decide. I voted for bug support and tech issues. Bethesda has been absolutely HORRIBLE at bug support beyond the major game-crashers. They do not go back to polish their work and treat it like their pride and joy. Unofficial patches become essential; kudos to the community, shame on Bethesda. Bethesda also seems to lack quality control; things are released as workable but still a bit sloppy upon inspection. Because it doesn't screw every user over, Bethesda seems to just shrug their shoulders and go "eh, good enough, whatever."

Blizzard still updates Diablo II and Warcraft III with gameplay & content fixes, content additions, and gameplay balancing.

As a customer, I feel slighted and disrespected by their lack of care and support for the post-release product. First, I'm insulted that I bought something with noticeable bugs and sloppiness. I'm then insulted again when my problems are ignored because they don't crash the game reliably. Take, for example, 360 and PS3 users - and PC users, except there's a work around for them - for the Vampire Cure quest. Big bug, everyone seems to get it. Would be such an easy little fix, yet Bethesda can't deign to release one little update. Similarly, the 200+ hour animation bug (PC users get a workaround, other platforms are s.o.l.).

I've played games with mediocre story, or animation, or graphics, or VAing, or leveling systems. But games that the dev doesn't care about fixing? It isn't like Beth doesn't have enough money to send a few interns off to make some patches.

I think a lot of people mistake the poll's question of character leveling with environment level scaling.

The Character leveling in Fallout series are quite different from their TES series and can not be compared with each other.

In Fallout series, the character leveling is experience based that let player chose what skills they want to raise, and do not let regular changes in attribute.

But in their TES series, the skills raise by usage, which is a good choice, but you are forced to raise your attributes while leveling up, which is a bad choice, as you have to power-game beforehand to get the best level-up attribute boost factors.

And only a portion of your skills will result in a gain of level which is another bad choice, as it would let players cheat the leveling system by using it backwards and select their major skills as the ones that they do not want to raise.

they take so long to make.

Two words:
Valve time

Definately the leveling system. I don't understand why this has to be such a huge issue, because there's simple fixes out there. For example, give one attribute multiplier for every major skill you raise. Then allow the player to raise their attributes by a total of 10 points, which they themselves can distribute. But only by as much as the multipliers allow them to.

It's a simple and logical system. Every level you gain makes you as much stronger as the next. You're encouraged to use major skill instead of minor skills, especially when you cap minor skills at the level of your 4th or 5th best major skill. Having a system like this would make even the level scaling in oblivion bearable.

Since uninteresting and shallow NPCs was not an option, i voted technical issues.

The level system is one of the things i really like about Bethesdas games. I love the way you raise your skills by using them.

The body models have never been good in any Tes Game, except maybe Daggerfall but that wasn't 3D. The male bodies in Oblivion wasn't that bad but the females looked more like men with too big arms, broad chest and thin legs. The face models didn't make anyone happy either. Most players play a female character so I think more work should be put into making feminine and attractive female characters with beautiful animations.

Really? and where did you get that information?

- Chara Design... so hard to create a nice character, especially when playing women in your games. Make it easy if you do not know how to make it hard. One recent example: Divinity II offers few options but my woman dragon knight looks far more a woman than any of Bethesda game ... but it concerns all the NPCs of Bethesda games anyway. A too complex system is useless if people can't manage to reach satisfaction. You can hire modders too, as they make a greater job you can admire in Morrowind/Oblivion/Fallout ... which leads to "why so many amateurs can do better than pro?"

- Animation... try to make people more alive when we have to talk to them. Their faces are so rigid. When playing in third person view, it is just a joke to see your character jumping, turning, running. Let's forget this view if this just to see how horrible the animations are. Looking to jap RPG, having animated hair is also a good idea to make a face alive. Just play Resonance of Fate.

- Menus... NO MORE LISTS. How can you allow your team to make LISTS to check inventory, weapons, armors? Even Morrowind on XBox was far better and easy to use with boards containing several objects. As a console player, I just do not understand the pleasure your testers/designers have when it comes to sort their inventory as this is a pain in the ass.

- Bugs… I’d like to start my New Vegas game. But since I’ve been told there is a save issue that can corrupts your saves and there is a patch on its way to correct that, I prefer to wait. -_-‘ … Maybe one day we have a game without major bugs that can blow up your game in an instant.

I voted bug support and tech issues. As much as I love Bethesda they're games are notoriously buggy. These bugs can range from mildly annoying at best to game crashing/save corrupting at worst. Even something like the autosave feature can corrupt you're save file if used too often. At least PC users have patches, workarrounds, and other fixes. Console users have no option but to load a previous save and hope the problem goes away. I played Morrowind on the Xbox for seven years before finally making the switch to the PC version and I can tell you that there is nothing more maddeningly frustrating then encountering a game breaking bug and not being able to do anything to fix it. So if TES V is in the works I really hope that Bethesda takes the time to remove as many bugs as possible before release day, or at least provides plenty of tech support afterward.

The bugs is probably my biggest beef. I don't mind if the enemy gets stuck in the terrain or other minor stuff as long as it doesn't freeze the game but Game Freezes and Save Corruptions are unacceptable. Everything else is fine but the bugs is a big problem and I hope its corrected in TESV.

The voice acting really gets on my nerves. Crashes and leveling system come close but those can be modded out.

indoor/outdoor loading.

I hate the voice acting in Oblivion. Not that the voice actors do a bad job, far from it, but all the NPCs sound the same. The Orcs sound the same as the Nords, The Argonians sound just like the Khajiit, and all the Mer sound alike. It really kills immersion, at least for me. Fallout 3 was a big improvement. The NPC's had far more diverse voices which went a long way to making the world of Fallout 3 a much more immerse place then Oblivion's game world, and I hope that trend continues in TES V.

The voice acting is Oblivion is something that I wasn't a big fan of as Orcs and Nords shouldn't have the same voice.

you forgot none, which is what I would put

I picked combat. Especially after recently just finishing a playthrough with Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

Blah blah blah "RPG vs. action game!", but why can't an ES game have both a dynamic and action packed combat system AND deep RPG components? This is the "next gen", isn't it?

The fact that when I start to play four days can go by before I remember I need to stop playing.

Can anyone honestly say that they like game bugs and glitches? All of the those other choices in the poll are really a matter of opinion, but bugs and glitches are a real problem.