If you guys want to run around virtually invincible for the vast majority of your game, that's up to you,

All it boils down to for me is that first of all, I don't enjoy damage-sponge enemies with fights that last 5 minutes to kill one Goblin Warlord. That's why I'm not satisfied with the lame "difficulty slider" Bethesda provided for challenge-seeking gamers like me. I understand that difficulty should be adjustable. 50-slashes-to-kill enemies is not the answer, it takes more than that to provide a real challenge. While OB is still my favorite RPG of all-time because of its sheer amount of content, I felt the entire experience was sorely lacking after I hit Level 20 or so. I wanted to do all the guilds, & SI & KOTN all on the same character, but I kept wanting to restart the game before I ever did so it would become challenging again. Don't get me wrong, Levels 1-15 of OB are the best fun I've EVER had in an RPG. I am not trying to brag, but I've made 2 battlemages on Oblivion (a Breton & an Argonian) and both of them got to the point around level 20 where I could walk into the Imperial city Palace District where the guards with the nice white & gold armor are, slap one of them in the face, then when they all start attacking me, I'll put the controller down and walk out of the room, take 5 minutes to make a sandwich, come back, and my health is still not even halfway down.

Anybody who is halfway decent at building an RPG character who has played OB as a battlemage knows that I am not BS'ing. This is on Default difficulty, Level 20 character with good gear, with a good number of points in Endurance. I don't care what excuses they may have about an open world, character diversity, or whatever, something is VERY WRONG with that. My brother is capable of doing similar things on Morrowind (I never played it, OB was my first TES game), but not as a FREAKING LEVEL 20. Now, they've basically come flat-out and said that Skyrim will be easier than OB. In my opinion, NV was the easiest Bethesda game yet, even on hardcoe mode. I'm starting to see a trend here. Oh, and they also admitted that it will take roughly the same amount of time to get to Level 50 in Skyrim as it did to reach the max Level of 30 in Fallout 3. That's not good either. Once again, thank God for mods. Modders, you're all going to have A LOT of work to do come November.

And to the guy on the last page who mentioned Wizards & Warriors, now that was a good old controller-thrown-through-the-TV type of challenge! :brokencomputer:
Ahh, those were the days. When it actually meant something if you had the skill to beat a game. Batman on the NES, anyone?

Seriously, I remember killing Death Claws at level 1 -_-

Maybe that badly wounded one that showed up in one of the random encounters, but I dare you to head up to Old Olney right after leaving Vault 101. Besides, you don't even enter the Wasteland unless you're level 2. Which kind of makes your statement suspect to begin with.

Actually, it was the wounded one from the encounters, but still, at LOW LEVELS PERIOD (I havent played 3 in a while) you shouldnt be able to kill a Deathclaw wounded or no.

And actually, at about level 5, if you have a high enough sneak skill a few stealth boys and a sniper rifle, Old Olney present an intermediate challenge. Go ahead, try it :turtle:

Like I said, I think that's your issue. You may be "too much gamer" for a Beth game. I know that I've never been "virtually invincible" in Oblivion or FO3. But, then, I also turned down the difficulty on PC Dragon Age (my non-ideal party didn't help, of course) and Half-Life 2 (got tired of getting my butt handed to me in the "defend the prison corridor with turrets" level, and then just wanted to see how the story went). :shrug:

And they weren't supposed to be. That was the beauty of having attained the 20th level. It was like being cannonized.

If you answer that advancement by breaking the verisimlitude of the game, either by turning every orc chief into a demon prince, or by actually filling the entire game with Balrogs, it destroys plausiblity for the sake of setting the game to insane challange mode. There should still be Demon Princes, but if they pop up in every single tower and cave just to provide your legendary hero extra challanges, it gets to be tedious, unimpressive, uninspired, and silly.

That's why there should be a functional difficulty slider or sliders. That actually increases and decreases the challenge. My faith in BGS would take a huge leap from just a simple demonstration that they get that. People should be able to play how they want, but BGS ignores gamers who want more challenge.

Maybe that badly wounded one that showed up in one of the random encounters, but I dare you to head up to Old Olney right after leaving Vault 101. Besides, you don't even enter the Wasteland unless you're level 2. Which kind of makes your statement suspect to begin with.

Fallout 3 refined a number of things that were originally introduced in Oblivion. I have no problem with its influence on Skyrim.

This was what I posted on my FO3 Journal after making it through Fallout 3's main quest . . . it pretty much sums up what I feel is most wrong with the default game:

From the first time I played Fallout, the game felt extremely unbalanced. I tried really hard to give the default game a chance, so at first I only added mods that made graphic changes. But then I waltzed though the Main Quest only wearing Butch's leather jacket for protection and with just the Overseer's 10mm pistol to defend myself. This game was way too easy! It was obviously targeted at casual gamers, and because of this focus, the player character was given a huge advantage over the NPCs. Sure, you may have to struggle a bit when you first escape from the vault (for like the first 10 minutes), but it really doesn't take long to end up with an over-powered character, with an arsenal of over-powered weapons, and more ammo than you could ever possibly use. I was seriously bummed out, as Bethesda had once again released a RPG that was so "mainstreamed," that it was only a shadow of what I felt it should have been.

The Wasteland was supposed to be a very harsh, unforgiving place, where survival was difficult. A 19-year-old, who had grown up in the comfort and protection of Vault 101, and had like no combat experience should not be able to take on entire groups of Raiders, with hardly a scratch. When my character did get shot, it was nothing more than a little boo-boo, with a little "ouchy" and in no time at all she was all-better.

I created a Fallout 3 overhaul mod that fixed all these issues [my Realism Tweaks], but it took me FOREVER before I was able to play the game in the way that I felt it should have been made in the first place. Now I'm worried that Skyrim won't be any more challenging than Fallout 3 was for me . . . and I really don't want to spend months working on another major overhaul . . . just so I can play the game in the way that I feel it should be played. [Making huge overhauls on my own is VERY time consuming . . .I'm still releasing updates for both my FO3 Tweaks and my FONV Tweaks. I'd much rather just play the game, but it is no fun for me unless the game play is challenging.]