My view of what's factually (you mean subjectively) wrong with the game is that the core - combat, the quest arrow, interaction with NPC - is at fault; the simple fact that you could edit your Skyrim to remove ALL dialogue and still beat every quest should be a clear indication that this isn't an RPG at all.
you can't. No conversation means you wouldn't know who to talk to, or what to talk to them about. or what cities to visit or even why you can absorb dragon shouts. Point is, you would lose A LOT in taking out the conversation. The flavor and essence of the game as a whole would leave. Not to mention that you wouldn't know how that guard used to be an adventurer until he took an arrow in the knee.
There are no tactical or strategic choices to be made,
Bull. You yourself indicated that you could snipe tough opponents to death at low levels. That is a tactic. And a necessary one to take on powerful opponents at low levels. And yes, giants and dragons exist at even first and second level.
everyone has the same character and access to all skills,
At the beginning, yes. But as soon as you start leveling, you put skill and perk points into a given path. Which you need to do to open up more powerful abilities. You can become a stealth expert and do stuff that someone who isn't can't do. You can become a wizard and cast spells that someone who hasn't mastered the various disciplines of wizardry can't cast.
and after so many hours and quests done, your copy of Skyrim will look just like everyone else's copy of skyrim; ask your friends and you won't find how one has locked himself out of a subquest, or how one manages to rip through a section full of undead because he has 3 priests while you have 2 wizards and can do another bit just as easy but are stuck at his bit.
You want a PARTY based RPG pure and simple. Skyrim isn't that.
COmbat is just silly; there's a ridge near one of the mammooth camps that you can simply walk off of while the manny won't; so you pelt them with arrows, they will chase you (slowly) around the ridge, and you walk off; then they come down, you keep pelting, and walk up again the other way. Then repeat. The only mob i found that gives any trouble in skyrim on Master is the tigers. this ofc is before i even bothered to block attacks ...
You mean you can use tactics in the game? I thought you said you couldn't? Seriously, this is a problem with dumb AI,not with it being a(bad) RPG. I bet you have the same problem with Crysis or, and I know this for a fact, with Baldur's gate.
here's a few pointers if you want to call your game a RPG:
More specifically, these are what YOU (subjectively) want in an RPG. They are not the textbook definition and therefore not FACTUAL in nature.
1) have classes or skill limits; don't allow the character to have *everything* in the game, but rather be forced to make choices which will reflect in the gameplay later on. (wanna be a wizrd? ok, but you won't be very good with swords)
While I agree with this as being something that I enjoy, it is by no means a deal breaker. Nor does it break the Role play aspect. Merely that my (and yours) PLAYING STYLE are maybe slightly different than others.
2) have dialogue and NPC interaction which carries information and importance in the plot; make the player think and deduce his course of action.
You may not have found the Skyrim dialogue to be robust and enlightening. But this comment completely disregards it 100% which I hardly think is fair. Conversations took place in the game. You as a player learned things that you didn't know before you started such as who the players were, what the political situation was, what quests were available, even some of the resolutions of quests required you to get information. The Thieves guild quests in particular offered several different paths based on conversations that you had with people. Same with The Companions quests. Where they Dostoevsky? No. But there was a heck of a lot more conversation than you give credit for
3) have levels or other forms of increasing power making characters stronger which leads to being able to beat more powerful monsters; make the characters do the fighting, based on said power, not the player.
Did you play the game? Reading this, I am betting you didn't. characters have levels. They advance and improve skills along a given path. Monsters are more powerful in some areas and less powerfull in others. You are completely wrong on this one, plain and simple.
4) allow for variety, not homogeneity.be prepared to code in a lot of stuff because every element you introduce, interacts with every other.
Again, have you played the game? There are different abilities for different races. There are different tactics to combat like stealth, control, hand to hand and ranged combat. And monsters react to different things in different ways. There is significant flavor and variety of landscape across the world. Dungeons, and mountain tops. Open planes and city scapes. Have you played the game? Or mearly read about it?
5) dont make the character overpowered!!
Have you played Baldur's gate 2, widely considered the best CRPG around to date. There are classes and class combinations that are significantly overpowered. And some that are under powered. It is the nature of variation in these types of games. And to say your character is overpowered by default in Skyrim, I really think this, if nothing else, proves you haven't played the game. In my 100+ hours in the game, I got one hit killed a bunch of times. I had to run away even more times. Try taking on a giant at 5th level (or 25th for that matter) and see how overpowered you are. Try taking on a Daedra overlord at 15th level and see who is overpowered.
And while some moderates here accept that Skyrim is an FPS, some defend it yet as a RPG.
What are you talking about. Skyrim is an Action RPG. it is under no circumstances an FPS. It has FPS Controls, but therein ends the comparison. Period.
As far as combat goes, it's just wrong that the player determines who wins a fight rather than the character - which puts Skyrim solidly into the realm of arcade games, with some RPG elements.
So your stance is that a poor player who plays a powerful character should always win and a good player who plays a weak character should always lose? Something is wrong in Denmark here folks. Put this guy's analyst on danger money baby.
And FYI elsewhere on these boards Skyrim is still passed on as the greatest RPG game of all times, which is what led me to write this long post.
And there are people who say that DA2 was a decent game. People have subjective opinions. Some of them are wrong. Doesn't make you right.
Look there's a couple simple way the Skyrim can be fixed; first, make it so that while swinging a sword, your character cannot move sideways (you can't actually do that). same ofc for the mobs. a better move model would be nice, like ghost recon has for example.
Who did you train under in sword mastery? Because you can actually swing a sword while moving. Quite easily. And to significant effect.
Yeah, I was going to tackle the rest, but it seemed like a rant to me. Some of what you want is just plain insane. Some can be done with Mods and some are merely difference in style of play rather than being wrong.
But hey... You liked the conversation wheel (mini-game) in Obilvion? I thought it was the stupidest thing ever (next to Athletics). It required zero role playing ability at all. was the stupidist "Conversation" mechanic. Didn't allow you to Role play your character what so ever. And was about as arcady a mechanic as you could come up with.
And hey. I liked ToEE. There should be more games like that. But if you are going to compare Skyrim to ToEE, therein lies your problem. They are different styles of RPG. Learn to deal with variety and difference.