"Endgame" is a term that can only be applied to RPGs (primarily) where the goal of playing is to get to the level cap in order to experience the highest level content/gear. The Elder Scrolls has never been about this, and if you play any ES game like it's World of Warcraft, you'll quickly become frustrated.

All TES games reach a level where the game mechanics have reached equilibrium, as in the challenges are gone for the most part. It is part of the series since the beginning.

However, if I approach the game the right way, I don't lose out on challenges at higher levels.

Lets see... you're a gimper, to avoid the lack of balance at just about every level, so the items in the game are no factor to you at level 50- if anything, they are a detriment to your enjoyment. You don't much care about loot or gold, so those aren't doing much to factor into your game enjoyment either. Your goals aren't generated by the game- I'll interpret that to mean you aren't all that thrilled by the quests in the game, including the main quests and the guild quests. So, we've removed the majority of the standard motivators from almost every game ever made, including Skyrim. Improving your character to be the best it can be? Nope. Finding more and better loot (some of which may improve your character) and gold? Nope. Participating in the general game quests in order to be entertained? Nyet. Doesn't leave much but a pretty world to wander around in, does it?

And I agree on all of these things that you are avoiding being pretty much lackluster and not all that enjoyable in Skyrim. No arguement there. But whereas some people like yourself are then able to ignore and forget about all these worthless (my opinion) elements of the game and enjoy a fine mental game of sock-puppet RPG'ing within the remaining carcass of the game (albeit a pretty carcass), a lot of us are just staring at the used-up carcass and thinking "Where's the beef?" I buy games to provide entertaining adventures for me, with lots of well thought-out, interesting and balanced motivating elements baked right into the cake out of the oven... not to force me into having to sock-puppet my own mental adventures out of the subpar skeleton of a game. There is no beef, sadly.

I commend you on your ability to make your own roleplaying fun in Skyrim, in spite of the lack of any well-made motivational elements in it. But I decry the fact that we are reduced to that as our only real option, due to that lack.

I can't figure out if you're hating on some people's ability to ignore a game's shortcomings and find fun in it anyway, or just failing to accept the jealousy you have obtained over this very thing.

It's just like how I don't care that I broke pretty much every quest in my game, including the main quest, because I only find fun in exploring caves, and killing mobs. Sure if you focus on every single thing that irks you, there is no way you'll enjoy any game. For you there will never be a such thing as "decent RPG" because you'll always been looking for faults.

Skyrim is simply, not that bad, and certainly is not a 'poor RPG' by any standard. If you want a poor RPG, you're looking at the wrong game. I can name quite a few that Skyrim just destroys, and I'm not talking about Oblivion, or any other TES game.

This is one of the big problem of skyrim...

Yes, but honestly, it is a problem in Morrowind and Oblivion as well. Once you get to a certain point in any TES game, the need to find loot becomes moot the encounters become much easier to deal with and you have to find other reasons to motivate your character to explore.

I think people have misinterpreted me.

If you HAVE TO use your imagination in order to fill the game with some substance. The game is bad. The game should stimulate your imagination. Otherwise we might as well be watching a slideshow.

You should be able to design a character who can fit within the defines of the pre-existing world. Not define the world yourself.

Anyone else find the game abit boring at high levels?

Loot and money were a big part when starting out. Loot to get better armor/weapons, or rare stuff to sell them at a high price so you could buy weapons/armor and improve stuff like Smithing

Im level 44 now tho and no shop has decent weapons better than the ones i have at the moment, and loot is poor too. Given up looting bodies or chests as i know they wont have anything better than i current have.

So for a game that uses loot as a big game mechanic, it becomes pointless later on

I actually think it's less prevalent in Oblivion because of the scaling. While battles can be mindnumbingly long, they're not really easy if you match the difficulty that Skyrim would have. (Double damage taken, half damage dealt). Enemy scaling and hard caps on virtually everything are what kept it in check, not that I'm praising the system necessarily. Considering how unshackled Skyrim is (Much like Morrowind), Limited enemy scaling could solve a lot of the issues of endgame. I want to stress Limited though. Old World Blues in Fallout: New Vegas took scaling a little too extreme with the enemies. Ideally, You'd have one "Boss" enemy that's scaled, screened with a few non-scaled enemies (standard enemies generated by the Leveled list).

There was talk of a mod that allows the player to own castle's or keeps, but with that the other keeps and castle's would have AI owners and they could attack yours and vice versa. You'd pay for your army but also collect money from anybody living/working within it. So it is basically a hold war thing, would have been good if anybody was up for the task.

My real issue is that any reasonably intelligent person can get a couple thousand gold without even try by the time they get to Whiterun. Gold just comes way too easy in Skyrim, which then allows you to buy pretty whatever you want, which then makes it too easy to become a wrecking machine by the mid 20s, particularly if you're a melee character or a sneak archer.

Huh. Whereas I push hard to get 5k gold by the time I'm getting into Whiterun, because it's so important to me to have somewhere to stash the vast piles of loot. And then, once I've got that, I don't need money ever again. Which is fine - I've always supplied myself in TES games by looting & making. Buy stuff? What for?
(And yeah, I know that's a somewhat atypical opinion. But I'm frequently baffled by the "too much money! they need to add more money sinks! I need to spend my money!" threads.)

What's so shocking about "Too much money" in Skyrim? When you can enter any crack in the mountains and emerge with 20,000 gold, it sort of devalues a lot of the quest rewards in Skyrim.

But Gold is just a lazy reward anyway. I really like what the Thieves Guild did, improving the Guild with more radiant questing. Every piece of Radiant content in Skyrim needs to take note, and follow this example. Spamming Bounty-hunter radiants should eventually improve the economy (remember when they said we could have an impact there?) of the hold you're cleaning up.

Excluding the Dark Brotherhood's questline, I've made over 30,000 Gold legitmately by selling all of my accumulated loot, spread out across dozens of dungeons.

If there WERE a single dungeon in the game that gave you 20,000 Gold, I would be much obliged to drop what i'm doing and go get it.

What's so shocking about "Too much money" in Skyrim? When you can enter any crack in the mountains and emerge with 20,000 gold, it sort of devalues a lot of the quest rewards in Skyrim.

But Gold is just a lazy reward anyway. I really like what the Thieves Guild did, improving the Guild with more radiant questing. Every piece of Radiant content in Skyrim needs to take note, and follow this example. Spamming Bounty-hunter radiants should eventually improve the economy (remember when they said we could have an impact there?) of the hold you're cleaning up.