Hello Mr Fur wearing bandit guy, how are you doing today. Thank you yes, I just popped out the sewer grate there.
...time passes
Hello Mr Glass Armour wearing bandit, you appear to have got very wealthy since we last met some 15 levels ago, why are you still living in this stick hut when your pauldrons could buy a castle?

I mean come on, do people really play the base games without any mods? Skyrim without sky UI? Sight you have not?

What does Oblivion level scaling have to do with discussing the necessity of unofficial patches?

Well, that is the number one thing which needed fixing in oblivion. The game was laughable with level scaling, completely broken. A brief look at the change logs give a good idea of bugs, but I am talking more about actual playability. The are plenty of essential addons. I think we are talking about two different things though.

Skyrim will always be an incompetent pile of spaghetti code under the hood.

But see, my entire point is I've never had any of these types of problems. Not with any of their games. I can only go on my own experience, ya know? Maybe it's because I rarely use mods, maybe it's because I play a certain way, or maybe I'm just lucky, I dunno. But I never experience any of that type of thing.

Don't forget game logic bugs, like the one in Morrowind that makes blindness increase accuracy (and Daggerfall has some bugs along those lines as well).

(Of course, this reminds me of SaGa 1 all over again; the game's battle system is *filled* with game logic bugs of this sort (including one related to blindness and accuracy), yet the game manages to be fun; in fact, sometimes it feels like the bugs give the game an interesting character, with there being downsides to raising stats too high.)

When you're as sensitive to the game mechanics as I am, you start to notice bugs that many players would not. For example, in SaGa 1, high agility makes you take more damage from multi-hit attacks; most players don't pay attention to this sort of thing, but it's the sort of bug I've noticed over years of playing that game. TES games have other things like that; when, after playing around in Daggerfall using the Mace of Molag Bal to murder guards (to see how high I could get my Strength), when a guard hits me for an unexpectedly large amount of damage I get suspicious. There's also the time in Daggerfall that I got instantly killed because an enemy hit me with an arrow while I was wielding a wespon with a Disintegrate cast on use enchantment. (For those not familiar, in Daggerfall Disintegrate is instant death rather than equipment damage.)

All good insight. Thanks to everyone and their replies.

I had more glitches playing The Witcher 3 than I did during 150 hours of Skyrim. The only issue I had in Skyrim was that my wife disappeared for half the game before just turning up again one day. But maybe wives just do that. I've also played Fallout 3 three times (I'm talking completionist completed as well), Oblivion once, Fallout 4 once, New Vegas twice (which is only published by Bethesda) and through all of that I never had a single notable issue and I never once installed any unofficial patch. I did install an unofficial patch for Daggerfall. Never played Arena. Oh yeah and about 50 hours in Elder Scrolls online without issues.
In my experience unofficial patches cause as many problems as they solve.

Some of them are hilarious and have led to some good memes/etc, though....so there's that. :)

The way Bethesda has treated the Fallout and TES series', especially the part where they eventually hid Skyrim LE and its addons, still slap-sticks F76's broken engine and broken promises, and still doesn't care how they treat their fan base, I highly doubt we will see Skyrim LE here. Perhaps when Todd Howard and his minions are done patting each others shoulders and stop praising SE and actually let people choose for themselves.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot the abominable Doom 3 version, Big Fracked Game, another attempt at dumbing down a perfectly good game, and you can't get the old version (which most people preferred).

I mean, there is a reason why some highly creative and crafty (not to mention patient) enthusiasts have made a de-specialized version of the original Star Wars trilogy because the fans thought the original creator went too far in his modern SE editions.

Until then, pirate them to rule them all ;) Well, The Withcer 3 was considered very polished, but still had some flaws and is still mod-able.

Consider it a bonus as no software is 100% perfect or 100% ready, even at the release (which actually makes many devs/publishers incompetent seeing how much are released WAY before their time), and giving others the ability to change/mod the software is the best thing you can do, for the better. Players are still making more fixes and content long after Bethesda are done with them; the fallout and the TES series' wouldn't have the same popularity and a still active mod-community if that wasn't the case.

Open-sourced or mod-able means they lasts longer, they also makes the games more enjoyable/memorable in the long run.

You could always use unofficial skyrim patch, i think it's gonna be muth more easier to mod than Oblivion. (Even without GOG supporting mods).

No store “supports” mods. All products are “moddable”. What is currently not developed by GOG is its own proprietary drm’d, anti consumer monopoly mod workshop which restricts users to a specific platform. Thankfully steam is now getting a taste of its own poisen with Bethesda starting their own content platform.

(Cries in Creation Club)

Maven Black-Briar is at the edge of her seat.

https://imgur.com/a/cEwW5XZ

I tried posting this before, but I'm having some technical difficulty with the forum. Apologies if it came up twice.