It is just a preference and they are two very different games. But here's the kicker. It's called Fallout 3. That name alone is essentially a promise to the player they will have a certain type of experience established by previous titles in the series. The developers didn't do that, though. They instead breached the trust they had in their audience by making something that resembled Fallout only in the most superficial of ways. That's called being a shady ass company. You're blatantly lying to consumers by naming your product something it's not. It should really come as no surprise when people get pissed off about things like Fallout 3 and 4. If you went to the store and bought a bag of Cheetos, only to open it later and find it filled with Oreos, wouldn't that be questionable marketing behavior? Sure, you might like Oreos and even eat a few at first, but at the end of the day that's not what you paid for.
I know I come here strictly as someone who appreciates solid game design. Fallout, Fallout 2, and New Vegas share a lot in terms of development philosophy; one started by Tim Cain which I respect immensely. A lot of users here make me laugh when they argue over the most trivial of narrative details, but I suppose that's because many of them look at Fallout from more of a literary perspective. Keeping that in mind, I understand why those in that camp would despise Fallout 3, as its writing is almost comically awful. As a designer, I view it as a slightly above-average open world adventure game, but really nothing more. Having essentially nothing to do with what the Fallout franchise was traditionally about, it exists in my mind as this sort of mislabeled sup-par spinoff. Kind of like Tactics, I guess.
I also think the streamlined catastrophe that was Fallout 4 really made people like me go back and appreciate the few redeeming qualities Fallout 3 actually possessed.
