For me, I've never really understood a lot of the complaints those types of players have, because I'm not really like that. I don't give a shit if I can join every single faction on one character because if I'm playing one that would never join the Brotherhood then I'm just not going to do the quest. Whether or not that quest is available doesn't impact its meaningfulness to me because my roleplay doesn't come from how I interact with the game, it's how I interact with the game that comes from the roleplay. What does breaks my immersion is when I have a character narratively that I can't represent through gameplay, in which case a lot of these "immersion improvement" mods and more robust systems can just make things worse by removing my control.
I can definitely understand this because it's the way I play (heavily modded) Skyrim. In my last playthrough I started planning out a run as a nightblade where I would start as a pickpocket, make my way to Riften to join the Thieves' Guild semi-organically after already having stolen enough to make Brynjolf's introduction make sense, then play through the Thieves' Guild and College questlines before joining Imperials and Dawnguard. This to complement my previous playthrough as a based and true two-handed Nord warrior Stormcloak Pqtriot doing the Companions, Main Quest, Stormcloaks and Dragonborn.
But in vanilla Skyrim I just can't see this in good faith, because the game actively tries to push you to join multiple factions. If I'm playing Jayred Ice Veins who doesn't believe in magic and can't hold a lockpick without snapping it, well I can't complete the main quest without Brynjolf forcing me into a criminal scheme, and the College questline will shove its way into my journal whether I like it or not. Ironically the fighter questline is the least intrusive since it just suggests you speak with the admin of their furry Discord after Aela berates you for not sprinting down the road to help them. The game WANTS you to join every faction and find every Daedric artifact, and good for you ignoring those hooks but that doesn't mean they're not intrusive.
I get off the wagon in Helgen as Hides-His-Teeth who is a slimy bastard, and so when I enter the keep and see the weapons Ralof offers me, I take the bow and dagger because a slimy bastard would never fight fair.
So... a stealth archer. The result of your choice-based roleplaying to make a unique character is the same character me and every other 14 year old who got Skyrim for Christmas played
except mine was a khajit named Nowun, from the land of Elsweyr, which is clearly much more clever. because as it turns out, the mechanical incentives of the game do a lot to influence your ability to roleplay.
I very much disagree that this is what seperates people who enjoy Skyrim from those who can't because even people who do like it still talk about the stealth archer experience, ie, the fact that all Skyrim playthroughs tend to become carcinised.
This is kind of what I'm getting at, no matter how much you build your character through 'narrative choice', eventually you will have to engage with the mechanical progression of the game. And in Skyrim, even more than previous games, that means picking your favourite flavour of graverobber. At least the Oblivion Thieves' Guild involved thief jobs, and the Mage's Guild involved solving magic problems (at first). Skyrim *will* make you fight Draugr in a crypt. And if my Nightblade hypothetically wants to put all my perk points into Illusion and Pickpocket, guess what, I'm getting gangbanged by beefed up dustmen because this is a dungeon crawler and you should've been putting points into a skill that does damage, retard.
This is not the problem; at the end of the day, The Elder Scrolls is a dungeon crawler franchise, it's the most consistent identity across every entry. You can fuck about in town and play dress-up but eventually, you have to get in the fucking cave and kill a boss for loot. You can't define your character only by narrative choices, you need to build a combat character, and that's where an attribute system allows you to think for yourself. There's no reason you can't apply this idea of 'build your character through choice' in Morrowind's stat system, it's just that Todd decided that too many numbers would scare the hoes and cutting them would be less effort than fixing the existing issues.
So what I really don't understand is why there's this narrative that Skyrim has such an issue with these things when it never seems to be a problem anywhere else. Like, okay, how is being caught in a general area for reasons that may or may not be true and escaping in what could be a freak accident any more limiting than being a canonical convicted criminal who is literally handed one of the most important artifacts in Tamriel because the Emperor himself thinks you're cool?
Sorry, but I've never heard anyone make this hypothetical case of criticising Skyrim's introduction while defending Oblivion's. Yes, Oblivion clunkily started the trend of railroading you into the main quest without any level gates or off-ramps, and Skyrim also pushes you into it, but with more finesse. You're encouraged to go to Riverwood, and then to Whiterun, to deliver information rather than an undroppable item. You can ignore it if you're specifically playing the kind of character who would ignore the earnest request for help from the person who saved you, otherwise not really.
If you ignore the request and instead just go to get supplies in the first village on the road out of Helgen, you'll be given a quest that leads you to an undroppable item which you need for the main quest. And as soon as you go to the central hub city of Skyrim you'll be reminded to go deliver that information whether you like it or not. You also can't participate in the Civil War everyone's talking about, and every time you pass a word wall- which happens as part of every single faction questline - it'll helpfully remind you you're the Dragonborn with a new shout in your magic menu. At least if you decide the Oblivion Crisis isn't your problem and dump the amulet with Jauffre, you can just play through the Mage's Guild without any further mental gymnastics.
I guess the word walls could just be Hides-His-Teeth having a panic attack and blacking out every time he sees ancient Nordic hate speech glowing and forcing slurs at him. Actually that's pretty based.
Once again the problem was solved in Daggerfall and Morrowind; just start the game with an open prompt and add level gates before players get to the inciting incident. They only changed it because Bethesda thinks console players won't pay attention if they don't start with an explosion.
