History ScrappyMechanic / TheElderScrolls

* LevelScaling, while much improved from the disaster that is ''Oblivion'', still pits you against enemies that are much more powerful than you if you focus on other aspects of the game, such as alchemy, pickpocketing, or lockpicking. On the flip side, enemies will drop slightly better loot, you will find much better equipment in shops and dungeons, and because dungeons are locked to the level you're at when you first entered you can come back later having gotten stronger if one is giving you trouble.

* Pickpocketing is something that has been a frustrating mechanic in every game in the series. Either the game makes actually stealing something borderline impossible (such as ''Morrowwind'') or the penalty for being caught is effectively no different from killing someone because of how crime is handled in each game, such as ''Oblivion'' guards being ''everywhere'' and relentless. On top of that, there isn't really any reason to pickpocket, as almost every quest that involves obtaining specific items usually just make the character with the item hostile to the player so they can be killed without issue out of fear for players who can't pickpocket, or the item isn't on a person to begin with. ''Skyrim'' is the only game with a decent pickpocketing system, but again, almost no quests actually are designed around it, making pickpocketing frustrating.

** The Thieves' Guild quests are the worst example of this. You can get sent to one of the other major cities in Skyrim to do a menial task, and once you've done five of them in a specific city, a new (unique) quest is unlocked that upon finishing grants you a merchant and some other bonuses. Not only does nothing in the game tell you these quests even exist, the game doesn't indicate how many of said quests you've done short of scrolling through your entire log, and there is no way to choose which city you get sent to so players have to repeatedly ask for and default on jobs in order to get one that's in the city they want.

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* [[ScrappyMechanic/RolePlayingGames Scrappy Mechanic - Role Playing Games]]
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''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series contains the following examples of Scrappy Mechanics:

** Kill cams, both how they interfere with certain play styles and how it can instantly kill players without warning. They have a nasty habit of missing with projectile kill cams, they interrupt player control, and worst off that they disregard all damage-mitigating factors: damage resist, blocking, cover, being way out of melee range...essentially, this makes it possible to you to die what should've been a survivable hit because the kill-cam triggered, resulting in very cheap-feeling deaths. It was eventually patched so kill-cams only trigger for the last enemy in current combat.

* The lack of ability to save created custom character design without [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19080 an external mod]], despite the time some players can spend to perfect their character and several older games such as ''Videogame/TheSims3'' or the contemporary ''Videogame/SaintsRowTheThird'' has such feature. This problem continues to Skyrim's spiritual successor ''Videogame/Fallout4''.

* On a meta example, the base Game of the Year edition on Steam ''only'' comes with the base game, the Knights of Nine, and the Shivering Isles expansions, and you can't purchase any of the DLC not included separately, meaning if you want any of the other expansions[[note]]Fighter's Stronghold Expansion, Spell Tome Treasures, Vile Lair, Mehrune's Razor, Wizard's Tower, Thieves Den, the Orrey, and the infamous Horse Armor[[/note]] and you only bought the base [=GOTY=] version, you have to buy the Deluxe Edition ''at full price''.

''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim''

* Destruction magic in general. While frying your opponent with lightning bolts or freezing scores of enemies with sweeping blizzards might be cool, it's diminished when one notices that spells don't scale well (enemies will gain health faster than you increase damage) and thus tour intended way of playing is to spam the hell out of them. On top of all this, the master level destruction spells cost far too much to use without enchanted equipment, and require a four-second pose to charge that, while cool, makes the player a sitting duck. And to make it worse, there are plenty of shouts that cost nothing to use and give similar if not better results, making destruction magic even more redundant!

* Having to wait several days between quests for the East Empire Company in ''Bloodmoon''. While it makes sense in-universe in that construction on the colony is ongoing between assignments becoming available (and those assignments are usually you removing issues that were holding up construction,) it unfortunately allows all of Solstheim's [[EverythingIsTryingToKillYou vicious and plentiful wildlife]] to respawn during that time. The lack of fast travel across much of the island means you'll be battling the same packs of wolves and hordes of Riekling Raiders every time you cross the same track of wilderness. While not overly challenging to a high-level character, they do wear out your equipment and greatly slow your traveling speed.

* Spell reflection if you're a magic-oriented character. Many enemies in the game will randomly throw your powerful destruction spell right back at you - which, considering the likely power of your spells combined with your own [[SquishyWizard squishiness]], is more than likely to kill you outright. Gets absolutely ridiculous, to the point of being unplayable, in the expansions. Further complicating matters is that any enemy with even a small percentage of spell reflection can cause this to happen due to how the mechanic works. For example, an enemy with 10% Reflect doesn't reflect 10% of your damage back at you, which would be more tolerable. It means that enemy has a 10% chance to reflect ''the entire force of your spell'' back at you. Even low to mid-tier enemies like Ash Ghouls and Atronachs have at least a 20% Reflect.

* Essential [=NPCs=]. Introduced in its current form in ''Oblivion''[[note]]It technically existed in ''Morrowind'', but only as the flag that displayed the window informing the main quest had become unwinnable through a certain character's death[[/note]], it became a Bethesda staple since then. Essential [=NPCs=] have CompleteImmortality and cannot be killed ''period'', which breaks immersion and forces players to deal with characters they may come to dislike without the option of simply putting them down, restricting their freedom. While certain quest characters lose their Essential flag once their quests are completed, many don't, forever leaving you stuck with these immortal characters you simply cannot be touched because the developers said so. And it only becomes more prevalent with time; ''Skyrim'' has ''over a hundred'' more Essential characters then ''Oblivion'' did. It comes to no surprise that many {{Game Mod}}s are dedicated to making certain Essential characters killable.

* The first major DLC,''Dawnguard'', adds vampire attacks. Essentially, take the "unexpected" and "NPC-killing" aspects of dragon attacks described above, then add the fact that they ''only'' happen in cities. Further, it's possible to enter a walled city only to have a group of vampires spawn all around you. If you go between cells within the city, it is possible for them to spawn at the entrance so that you may not even know the attack was happening until you stumble upon the dead bodies. Thankfully ''Special Edition'' replaces these with a single disguised vampire who only becomes hostile if you approach them.

* The first major DLC,''Dawnguard'', adds vampire attacks. Essentially, take the "unexpected" and "NPC-killing" aspects of dragon attacks described above, then add the fact that they ''only'' happen in cities. Further, it's possible to enter a walled city only to have a group of vampires spawn all around you. If you go between cells within the city, it is possible for them to spawn at the entrance so that you may not even know the attack was happening until you stumble upon the dead bodies.
** Thankfully a mod called "Run for your Lives" available for [=PCs=] and the eighth generation of consoles fixes it so in event of Dragon and Vampire attacks, most (usually except combat capable and essential) [=NPCs=] run to safety. For the Nintendo Switch vampire attacks are (thankfully) removed from the game outright as it's the most recent release without modding capability. No luck for those on [=PS3=] and [=Xbox=] 360 though.

* A minor example: adopting a child is fun. Less fun is the child's ability to adopt a random animal out of the wild as a pet. It can be frustrating to bring Meeko home to your kid, thinking that you'll give him a good home and he can spend his days lying by your fireplace instead of in the shambling cabin of his deceased master, only to find that the kid has taken a shine to a ''mudcrab'' in your absence. Each child can only adopt one pet, so until/unless you adopt a second child, poor Meeko is out of luck.

* When Horse Armour - one of the first ever paid pieces of DLC (in a game with a very active modding community no less) - first hit the scene, Oblivion players pretty much lost their collective minds.

** Thankfully a mod called "Run for your Lives" available for [=PCs=] and the eighth generation of consoles fixes it so in event of Dragon and Vampire attacks, most (usually except combat capable and essential) [=NPCs=] run to safety. For the Nintendo Switch vampire attacks are (thankfully) removed from the game even in vanilla. No luck for those on [=PS3=] and [=Xbox=] 360 though.

* Stamina drains as you run and the more Stamina you lose, the more often tasks you perform fail. This leads to players having a hard time dealing with doing ''anything'' after running a short distance, including battle, unlocking things, and bartering. (While it makes sense that one would have difficulty with precise movement tasks and speaking if they are out of breath, it probably should have been an AcceptableBreakFromReality for the sake of the player's sanity.) Until you find faster methods of traveling, you'll have to walk for majority of the time if you're going to get anything done.

* Stamina drains as you run and the more Stamina you lose, the more often tasks you perform fail. This leads to players having a hard time dealing with doing ''anything'' after running a short distance, including battle, unlocking things, and bartering. (While it makes sense that one would have difficulty with precise movement tasks and speaking if they are out of breath, it probably should have been an AcceptableBreakFromReality for the sake of the player's sanity.)