User blog comment:Thedoucheinthenorth/Two gameplay flaws with Skyrim/@comment-4975504-20121102181209/@comment-3492791-20121103013814

In a 1:1 fight, realistically, failing your sword around like a dick will get you killed.

When you are fighting someone they aren't going to just start flailing too. They would just wait for you to open your guard since you are not paying any attention to what you're doing. Even if you both were flailing at each other your weapons would collide at some point. In which likely someone would lose theirs.

There is nothing realistic about the combat in Skyrim, but that's fine. It works for how the game is made so it doesn't hurt the gameplay. It's just that really there is no way to implement any strategy into combat. Mashing the attack button until one of you drop dead is the most effective strategy in the entire game. Shields, Wards, and the like are really kind of hindrances in combat because enemies hardly ever telegraph their attacks. The only way to make use of them is really to just turtle up, which makes it so you are not attacking at all and if you use a ward you'll waste all your magicka (which obviously need since it would be weird if you used wards on anything other than a mage). Shields are pretty much only for bashing people over the head with until you run out of stamina.

Overall it's just a lack of variety since not all stratagems are equally, or even remotely, as effective.