Example; the Legend of Zelda: BotW and TotK weapon degradation system. At first I was annoyed at it, but once I stopped caring about my “favorite weapon” I really started to enjoy the system. I think it lends really well to the sandbox nature of the game and it itches that resourcefulness nature inside me.
You’re a decade or so older than me, and I think that affects our experiences of how it was received.
Personally I wasn’t on any online forums (at least ones which discussed TES) back then. I only had friends of my own age, people who had been tweeners/teeners when Morrowind came out and older teenagers when Oblivion came out.
I genuinely don’t remember any gripes about the game in comparison to older TES. Well, except that I really loved how open-ended the crafting was in Morrowind. You could do seriously OP items if you had the skill and gold.
This is also a difference between us, as I played it on PS3 back then, so didn’t have mods. Neither did my friends.
I was much more critical of the games I played when I was 30 compared to when I was 20. So perhaps that’s a bit of the explanation? I’m not saying none of your complaints are true, they’re probably all true from a certain pov. I just didn’t experience any of them myself, and seemingly neither did my TES playing friends, and we weren’t into reading online reviews or anything.
I’m sure you’re right that age, the circles we ran in, and platforms all played a significant role in our experiences around the game. That’s why I wanted to underscore that it was reviewed phenomenally. But so was Oblivion. Oblivion ranked much closer to Skyrim than Morrowind did, and I’m pretty sure it sold better than Morrowind too.
But like you suggested, a lot of the magic games have is found within us, especially when we’re younger, and more open to it. Though yeah, Skyrim was still pretty fucking good. But what do I know? I liked the persuasion mini game in Oblivion that everyone else seemed to hate.
Now that you mention that, that was a thing, among with a few others that perhaps made me go “well that’s a bit boring”. That was about the extent of complaints I had about Skyrim.
We drank beer, smoked weed and slayed dragons while epic soundtracks played.
I’m pretty sure a lot of the enjoyment I got was contextual yeah.