I have about 30 quests and don't even know which one is the main quest... is it marked somehow? Half of my quests are in big bold letters (so I suppose they can't all be the main quest) and the others are grouped under Miscellaneous or something.

Competitive book-reading.

That probably explains a lot -- because of your history with games you're more likely to look for a means of expressing a game in numbers, to reduce it to its functional elements, to see it in a 'hardcore utilitarian gamer' kind of way? I could definitely see the whole affair being disappointing from that perspective.

I played Quake 3 semi-competitively for a while and had a hard time appreciating slower, less technical FPSs.

True dat, I have a chronic case of being that guy who's always too busy working on stuff to hang out. I guess you could say I enjoyed Oblivion/Fallout 3/Skyrim in the same way you might enjoy an incredibly rich 1,000,000-page choose-your-own-adventure book. It's a completely different type of entertainment than a skill game.

To be fair I was really enjoying it. I'm just a bit bitter about the fact that it ended so soon. I was actually looking forward to doing the side-quest, I was just waiting for a moment where the main quest-line got too tough so that I could enjoy a few side-quests with the feeling of "I'm gonna come back stronger and kick whatever evil was stopping me's arse". I was secretly hoping that the main quest-line was epically long and that I had only really just begun.

When it suddenly ended (to be fair, it wasn't sudden and it was an epic ending by most standards), I was a bit shocked and disappointed that the whole game was suddenly dead.

It's exactly the same with books or films: the book or film is alive until I've seen the very end. Some of the books I've enjoyed most, I've deliberately stopped reading 3-4 chapters before the end so that I can come back later and re-read the whole book from start to finish because there is the feeling of anticipation for discovering how it will end.

All Skyrim had to do was make the last boss extremely hard, and I would have gotten sooo much more enjoyment out of the game.

I give them credit for trying something new. I don't like it either, but it isn't totally a lost cause. It would also be nice if it showed more information about what I had in my inventory/equipped/spells when hovering over related items so that I know how many of something I have or so that I can compare equipment to what I'm already using without switching menus.

...overall, Skyrim is pretty. The story doesn't really pull me in and I already played Morrowind and Fallout3, so it feels like the same old game with better graphics. Nothing wrong with that, either.

UIs and control setups originally made for a console and then not reworked to work properly on a PC is a fairly common problem. Bioshock and Far Cry 2 are two games I've played lately that show symptoms of consoleitis.

I've got about 20-30 hours in now and my thoughts are still about the same. Still not a fan of the menu system (and I play on a console), but I've gotten used to navigating it. The story hasn't really impressed me yet and I was hoping something big would happen at High Hrothgar (the first time you get there). The battles have become really easy, e.g. I feel over-powered while in Oblivion I always felt under-powered.

And the scripting still seems awful. Two examples. Kill a dragon in a town and nobody really seems to recognize the feat immediately afterwards. Another example, I exited a cave and my follower said "hey, there's a cave, I wonder what's inside."

It's nice to be in a fantasy world with the ability to do whatever I want, but these little details greatly reduce my overall rating of the game. It seems like from Oblivion to Skyrim, we've gained a slight bump up in graphics and cinematic finishing moves, neither of which are a big deal to me.

I know a comic was posted earlier, but yeah, fighting giants is a bad idea.

I hear that's a highly viable tactic ...

Reminds me of Oblivion quest to get 20 bear pelts. I gave up trying to find bears and just kept moving time 24hrs and going into shops, got the 20 within 5 minutes

I've been enjoying it a bit more now that I'm not expecting it to be perfect. Yeah, I still roll my eyes from time to time, but nothing that has made we want to go on a mad, rage-rant.

What type of character are you playing? I'm a Nord focusing on heavy armor, smithing and one-handed weapons (war axes) and restoration (uh, a Paladin). Fighting a single mage is typically the easiest battle for me, since they have very light armor. But if a group of mages gang up on me, they can destroy me in a hurry. And I've taken on a skilled mage who could one-shot me.

Dragons are nuisance because they typically kill...my follower.

Companions are ridiculous. The developers need to read "A retards guide to balancing a game". I dismissed mine immediately as it was totally destroying what little sport I was having.

I'm installing Witcher 2 now. I'm confident that it can't possibly be as poorly balanced as Skyrim.