Of all the entries present on this list, this is the one which managed to single-handedly destroy any semblance of difficulty or balance within a few minutes of playing: alchemy. Infamously turning Morrowind into a title players could casually breeze through overnight, the system caused problems on two fronts. The first was how it could be exploited, leaving the players swimming in gold with just enough time and patience. While simple ingredients only sold for a single gold each, combining two such cheap raw materials into a single potion created an item worth significantly more than just two gold. Hey presto; infinite gold exploit right out of the starting gate, allowing players to effectively bribe their way to victory so long as they kept track of what grew where. Bad enough as it was, this is also the lesser of two evils. As the effectiveness of each potion was based heavily upon the intelligence score of the player, any budding alchemist would naturally be hungering for Fortify Intelligence potions and brewing them however they could. Well, not only does one of the game's closest starting cities have the right ingredients by the truckload, but it also opens up the way to becoming a raging juggernaut of death. By creating Fortify Intelligence potions, drinking them and then using their newfound skill to make better potions, players could stack the effects again and again for however long they needed. Once intelligence was in the thousands, players could immediately start churning out the stuff of dreams, with Regenerating Health potions which resorted tens of thousands of hit points per second and lasting for days on end. Combined with yet more stats boosting skills, and the Nerevarine could attain physical godhood within a few hours of starting the game. For all the fun there might be with carrying around several hundred suits of power armour in a severed head, airborne tigers and levitating paintbrush fortresses, above all this is the one which stands out as the ultimate programming error by Bethesda. Have your own big glitches, bugs and problems which didn't get a mention? Please leave your own suggestions in the comments below!
A gamer who has played everything from Daikatana to Dwarf Fortress. An obsessive film fanatic valuing everything from The Third Man to Flash Gordon. An addict to tabletop titles, comics and the classics of science fiction, whatever media they are a part of.
