Parts of this game are challenging for me other parts are not. That is the way it should be.

But does it make sense you could make yourself 1000x a master smith by drinking potions and spending a day making cuttlery? Does it make sense that you'd spend weeks lurking outside the store or crossing hundreds of miles from town to town there and back. there and back, there and back to buy stuff?

In Daggerfall quests had time limits and you'd fail if you dikeed around shopping. Skyrim doesn't 'punish' you for that... but does it make sense?

I love how the response to almost every single point raised against Skyrim is ''behave yourself! Don't do this! Play THAT way instead!!!'' Yeah, because having to play a certain way in order for the game to stay fun is at the heart of the series's design philosophy amirite.

If the game is badly balanced (and to a point, it is) it's not the player's fault. At all. Even if the player ''raises'' the difficulty by gimping him/herself, the problem doesn't go away; the game does not provide enough challenge, and gives the player tools that are too powerful for the challenges it brings to the table. That's it. It doesn't mean the people believing that hate the game, are WoW 'tards or should go play Dark Souls.

Not to mention it doesn't fit role-playing or Bethesda's dear ''immersion''. Why should my warrior trained in Heavy Armor and Smithing decide to suddendly wear non-enhanced Light Armor because using these two skills make him very hard to kill? He likes living, you know. It's also not my fault I decided to go Two-Handed and Archery, not knowing these skills become somewhat broken at high levels if you smith your stuff and add a few enchants. I am not going to give up my favored playstyle because Beth fails at balancing.

I'm at level ~45 with 100 one handed, block, and archery, yet I still think the game is challenging on adept. Why? Because I didn't use an exploit to make myself uber-powerful. I gained all of my skills through legit combat. I picked all my perks based off of what I wanted, not what would eventually make my character god-through-grinding (like smithing). I'm not forcing limitations on myself, either. Just playing without grinding and exploits. I'm at a balance where I can take out a squad of bandit chiefs easily, yet still die if I slip up and miss a few blocks.


After playing Oblivion with the Duplication glitch and every exploit imaginable, I decided to play Skyrim completely naturally. It's definitely an improvement.

Trust me, your post was wasted when you started using logic and reason.

The game is hard, let's be real

Cheers

I agree with you. I'm a long time crpg player and so I'm a min-maxer at heart too.

However I didn't find it hard to not go overboard with crafting. It's not like the game is seducing you begging you to do it.

Yes, because nobody accidentally happens upon a 100 smithing skill level, and Skyrim is designed in such a way that somebody would have to, say, smith over 400 iron daggers to do that, and there's absolutely no way that Bethesda sat there and programmed the game and said to themselves that they'd have to make it a 4,000 iron dagger limit to avoid being blamed for poor game mechanics....... I'm sure they 'knew' that 400 would be enough to prevent anything but deliberate abuse, and that 400 represented a pretty solid game mechanic for anyone who isn't a pure-bred moron.

Simply put: This is the way ALL TES games have been. What were you expecting? Please, answer the question.

I find it very easy to set the difficulty at just the right amount to keep the game fun and exciting. I'm sorry if you can't figure out how to do the same. I'm not talking about just using the slider, though that can be helpful too, especially for if I want to make a quick, drastic change in difficulty. I'm also referring to things like picking up non-combat perks, avoiding using the "level-up" for a time, sending my follower home for a while (or going back to get her), and other things of that nature. I haven't even needed to try using better or worse gear, but that's certainly a viable method, too. I just haven't needed to use it.

If a game is made so it is challenging for the absolute best players, then it will be unplayable for everyone else. If on the other hand it is made so it is beatable by even the worst players, it will be boring for everyone else. That's what I like best about Skyrim. It allows you to tailor the difficulty (by more than just a slider that controls mob hitpoints and damage) to your specific ability. As an effect of that, it also allows you to tailor the difficulty to be much too easy for you, too (or much too hard, but for some reason, no one seems to complain about that- probably because I doubt anyone does it, or leaves it that way). Sorry, but I don't think there's any way to have it this flexibility without the side effect. Because of that, if you don't want the game to be too easy (and thus get boring too fast), you have to use your own self-discipline to not make it too easy, or if it is already too easy, to make it more difficult.

I LIKE the flexibility. I LIKE being able to continually adjust how easy or hard it is to play as I go. It allows me to keep the game fun and exciting, but still winnable. You know what? You probably ARE a better video gamer than me. If you played my characters, you'd probably find it too easy. Congratulations, you win the Internet. This is a single player game however, and nobody cares how good you are but you. I may not be great at pushing buttons in just the right order, with just the right timing, but in my book, the real object of every game is to have fun, and by that criteria, I'm kicking ass in Skyrim!

Way to try to target one part of my post and then try to bend twist it around. If the game can't handle being played normally by a gamer who isn't bad, there's a problem.



A couple minutes to master a skill isn't a ridiculous amount of time. Try again.

The only way to to go overboard with crafting is to not use it. Not everyone who is complaining about the game being easy decided to craft 10,000 iron daggers, though Bethesda is still at fault for making that the most efficient way to level the skill. I thought they went for a semi-realistic leveling system in their games?

Cheers.

119 hours in and my smithing is at 41. Granted, I am not using any perks in the smithing tree, but I DO mine everything I come across because I want the money from the items I can make.

It takes 2-3 iron daggers to level smithing once. Right? But...why would my character be making cheap daggers? Armor sells for a LOT more. So I use something like 4 iron ingots and make a piece that sells for 100 gold instead. That means I have to mine two ores per piece. The ONLY REASON TO MAKE THE CHEAPEST ITEM IS TO POWERLEVEL. What part of that is not sinking in for you?

Or they could make it so that daggers weren't a viable way to get to 100 smithing, and made it so that you had to start crafting items that were harder to gather the materials for, or were at least restricted to a leveled list system.

I'm going to ignore the first part of your first sentence, because the idea that I should have to close my eyes and pretend that a skill doesn't exist in order to make a game challenging is just pathetic.

Hmm, tell me exactly how you got smithing to 100.

Did you go explore dungeons, bring back loot, sell, buy ingots and craft?
Did you go around town stealing everything that wasn't locked down, buy ingots and craft?
Did you go to a mine, get iron ore, smelt to ingots and craft?

Did you do all three?
Did you loot the Dawnstar invisible vendor chest?

I call BS if you did anything resembling 'gameplay' to get that skill to 100.

1. In reference to smithing, I went through one dwemer ruin, which provided me with enough stuff to raise many levels in smithing. Also, a single mine provides enough ore to raise many levels of smithing at once. Honestly, the skill just raises very quickly.

2. In response to, "Asking them to gimp certain playstyles in order to give you more of a challenge is basically the same thing, the only difference is YOU control the level of gimping you want instead of the game doing it for you. "
I asked whether the system I proposed would force anyone to gimp themselves while playing. You would play the game using the mechanics in place. Difficulty is adjusted for everyone by a difficulty setting, not by neglecting game mechanics. This is the purpose of a difficulty setting, to allow you to make the game as easy or as difficult as you would like. I'm not asking for Beth to make the default difficulty harder, or for them to gimp your playstyle. I want you to be able to pick a setting that will allow you to keep the game difficult no matter how you play, or easy, depending on what you want. If you see anything in this suggestion that would take away your ability to play a thief in fur armour, let me know because I don't really see why it would.

3. ecoming ridiculously overpowered is the POINT OF THE GAME. Do you not recall the end of Morrowind? Sorry to sound hyperbolic, but that's the entire idea behind putting these open abilities in the TES series. They've always been there.
Firstly, I was very clear that it has been done in the past. Once again, I have no issue with you becoming OP should you want to. I have an issue with it happening without my consent. FYI, i didn't have a problem with spellcrafting in Oblivion, becuase it was somewhat out of the way, and required you to really plan out how you were going to make something OP. I don't want to take that ability away. My concern is with a natural progression system that makes you hilariously overpowered. If I wanted that power, I could lower the difficulty. I want the opposite freedom. This takes some thought to do well. If I have to search on the forums to figure out what skills I must avoid, something is wrong. Conversely, I respect your right to want an overpowered character. Lowering the difficulty level won't necessarily do that for you, because you are interested in progression. I too, am in interested in progression. But just like it would be unfair for me to try to take away your freedom to become overpowered, I think it is unfair for you to say that I shouldn't be able to be challenged. I think Beth could do a better job balancing both sides. I shouldn't have to try 3x harder to stop becoming overpowered than you must in order to become overpowered.

4.Therein lies your problem- you are talking from the perspective that these things are mistakes from previous games that need to be corrected. They are intentional, part of the series. Just because you want it to be differently doesn't make it so. Sorry.
I have no pretensions to being the ultimate authority here. I am questioning the assumptation players have that the games must stay this way. In terms of mechanics, I would suggest 2 things.
1. Difficulty should be adjusted via a setting, not through mechanics.
2. The amount of difficulty required to stop yourself from being overpowered should be equal to that you must expend in order to become overpowered, not 3x more.

I don't mean to sound insulting, but I don't think your last post really addressed the crux of what I said. I don't think challenge must come at a cost to freedom in the majority of cases, and can in fact enhance your freedom.

For me, reasonable difficulty often means

1. the solution and'or path to the puzzle isn't posted in plain-sight in-game. Good example: Golden Sun 1&2 (not 3)
2. expendable resources (potions scrolls etc) aren't dead weight; ie the game needs you use them in one fashion or another. Good example Dragon Quest 9

Skyrim fails on both counts

Oh yeah? I didn't powerlevel smithing by crafting iron daggers until my chatacter's arms fell off, and guess what? It somehow magically got to 100 anyway! Who knew that was possible?!

I don't think TES has ever been about "difficulty" It's about the journey.

I see from both sides of this argument. Skyrim is The only TES game I have upped the difficulty on before. The problem should not be focused on the skills but the enemies. Their AI is easy to fight against. I can take a lv1 against an ice troll on master with a dagger because I know how to step in and out of his swings so he can't hit me. Though my damage would never beat his regen, but that's not the point.

What I would like to see is AI behaving different. Favor quick attacks over slow clumsy power attacks, eating stamina regen food, using health pots and spells more (see a little of this in the mod PISE) as a form of difficulty instead of huge HP pools and massive damage modifiers. I still have fun, all TES games have been relatively easy. I just feel master should have more to offer than larger HP pools on opponents who hit like trucks.

We need to avoid diluting TES from what it's been by further elimination of playstyles and changing skills. This has been devastating to my experience because I used to only play mages and use spellcrafting for all my spells. They already destroyed spells, which could have been glorious in Skyrim. It's not a good idea to start boxing in everything else too. We just gained smithing, let's not loose it to something foolish.

Who the heck sits there and makes 400 daggers. Boring. I'd rather sit and chop wood.

I craft items I am going to use. Not to skill up.

Problem solved.

And yes as I have I said I agree this needs patching and IF Skyrim were an mmo with "builds" and "gimping" and "nerfs" and "grinding" and "uber" and [censored] it would have been asap. Noone cares that you have a level 80 with bajillion hitpoints and daedric legendary armor... that time you spent grinding would have been better spent jerking off...

As it is you can just not do it, just like if you find a bug/exploit in any game you can just not do it till a fix is in.

Why do these threads turn into a crafting debate? The game is too easy on master even if you don't take crafting skills. If you do taking crafting skills, should the game still have some challenge with 100 smithing when you are level 50+? Its it really out of the question to ask for balanced gameplay. Saying the people who complain are all powerleveling crafting skills is stupid.

Exactly. Thank you.