I feel like the "there are dozens of us! Dozens!" meme when I'm like I didn't think Skyrim was very good. The story was mostly thin, the combat wasn't great, the systems were shallower than the previous games, the leveling wasn't great (the scaling was better than oblivion but that's a lot bar).
I played it a lot but a lot of that was trying to get it into something I liked via mods.
Edit: I think Skyrim also has a certain meme status, where people who don't play a lot of games play it. That's a very loose measurement of quality.
It takes a bit to get going, but we've put a lot of hours into it. But for online game, it's achieved what it set out to do. The story can be hit or miss but it has a boat load of it so overall it's super enjoyable due to the usual fallout world building.
Damn. I know you meant well, but you sound like a project manager of a feature on an insurance website and the minimum viable product was kinda janky and you are trying to soften the blow to the team during the lessons learned meeting.
But this is a video game. For relaxation and recreation. With lots of competition in the market. What you wrote is more of a condemnation than any hyperbolic gamer nerd rant.
Early on I had an experience where a pack of dogs came at me while I was fumbling around in my menus. I was like fresh out of the vault in a jumpsuit. They bit me so many times, and I didn't die. Or suffer any consequences.
Feeling like it was all paper tigers really soured me on the experience. Some people probably like that and don't want a game where you can be defeated. That's not usually my jam though.