Wondering what your experiences with the difficulty settings have been.

I played on master for awhile, but the problem with master for me was it just encouraged me to play overly careful while also using a lot of cheesy tactics. NPC health levels are too high, and this limits you options considerably when it comes to building a character that can be reasonably effective.

Expert seems like considerably better experience, and actually I might move down again to adept.

In Skyrim, playing experience stops improving how fluidly you handle combat pretty early, and your characters stats end up being the most important factor in whether you survive most encounters of any significant difficulty. I feel like it's just not meant to be taken seriously or at least shouldn't be. I find myself, when playing on master or expert, focusing more on my character's build and trying to optimize his armor, resists, and health to avoid getting one or two shot, as well as trying to limit how far I level certain skills to kind of control the scaling so that my various spells/skills remain effective against level scaled enemies.

Moving the slider up from default really just ends up increasing tedium, rather than difficulty. I think a lot of people playing on master are doing themselves a disservice by focusing so much on the game's worst aspect - the combat. And I say this as someone who genuinely tried to play by a set of rules, use self control when it came to exploits/cheese, and create an appropriate balance of challenge and enjoyability. Skyrim's combat mechanics however, make sure it's basically one or the other. The majority of the time, you kill or get killed for all the wrong reasons, regardless of difficulty.

Expert seems to be a good mix between challenge and fun. Adept was too easy, and Master is the difficulty setting for a powergamer and not a roleplayer like me.

Im role-playing and not power gaming as well. Adept has been the most fun so far, but sometime I wish I had played that certain part on expert because it was a tad to easy.

Master. I generally play games on hard(est) difficulty because I love that feeling of having to use every tool available to me.

I voted undecided but lean most strongly towards Expert. There are moments where I am challenged to the point where if I had been playing on Master I know I would have had to lower the difficulty. There are also moments back when I played exclusively on Adept where I felt cheap or confused when I received pretty good loot from a mediocre encounter.

Zakum is pleased with Adept.

I agree. Master difficulty is a false sense of accomplishment, because it is all about dps and damage mitigation. It reminds me of the MMO Elitism mentality that I experienced in Final Fantasy XI. I just want to see my character grow and experience some amazing events. I don't want to worry about getting one-shotted every five seconds, because videogame interfaces are not intuitive enough for such high stakes.

The only time Adept becomes too easy, is if you are a very high level. It should become that easy if you are a higher level, and I want it that way.

My first character is playing on Adept.

I am in a dilemma on whether to play on Novice for my second character (pure sorcerer), because destruction has been nerfed very badly. If I did, I would plan to compensate the damage resistance on my character by keeping my Health attribute low. That way, everyone dies fast.

I dont know. Whatever the default setting is.

Seems like the higher difficulty levels are always more about micro-managing and tedium.

I want a challenge, but I have enough to stress over in my life, Skyrim is for fun.

Too each their own though. Thats what I like about TES.

This one is pleased with Master.

I played on adept for a while and found that while still possible to die, most things are simply too easy and on master everything has an absurd amount of health and just makes the game tedious. I've now been playing mostly on expert and find it's a good balance of difficulty although there are some moments that have been frustrating like fighting two draugr deathlords at once it's mostly due to playstyle since I'm an unarmored spellsword but with a bit of perseverance I can still get through them.

Masters hands down.

I wear robes and even then every other difficulty is too easy. If a game doesn't give you a sense of tension in combat, then combat isn't any fun at all. At masters difficulty, with ~400 health, I will die in 3 hits from a strong enemy, and about 3 magic attacks from a master mage, traps may 1 shot me, etc. Knowing this forces me to play more tactically, I pay more attention to the environment, I look out for enemies in advance, peek around corners and sneak when necessary in dungeons. I also look at enemy composition, killing weak enemies, using shouts on elites to disable them, leaving them alone at the end to fully engage. This in my opinion really makes combat more engaging and rewarding.

Expert is enough for me, for now. Might go master on my next playthrough

What I'm looking for in TES is a mix of easy and hard fights. My first playthrough is on adept difficulty and I like it so far. If I ever one hit kill boss mobs it'll be time for me to start my second playthrough.

I'm playing on expert and really liking it. It's just like the difficulty in halo games (easiest, easy, normal, heroic, legendary). Normal is perfect for people who are experienced in playing games, but haven't played too much of the previous games in the series. For veterans of the series heroic is the difficulty to be played on, and the difficulty that is the most fun because it strikes a balance between being a challenge but not being way too frustrating. And for people who really want to be challenged there's legendary.

I'm fairly sure, I am the only player in the world that plays on novice. =P And I do have my challenging battles.

it depends on what class I'm playing

Adept some time even aprrentice. It is simply not fun to have to dit a bandit 10 times in the head with a warhammer to kill them. I rather focus on the story and exploration adn not on bashing enemies in the head for a long time untill they die..

Anything below expert isn't fun...

I'm a power gamer... so have to with master

Master makes you use everything the game has to offer - and you notice the rewards much more.

I must say I'm surprised that everyone isn't posting their usual "I play on Master with no armor and OHK everything with my Iron Dagger" posts.

I switched the difficulty from expert to master when I killed a dragon priest and a dragon at the same time. However, the enormous amounts of health everything has on master does make combat a little boring, and the retreat heavy strategies I'm forced to use aren't particularly fun. I voted expert, but in truth I'd prefer something between expert and master.

Haha!

Honestly felt to me like they should have axed at least one of the low difficulty settings, and set expert as adept, and had 3 more settings after.

Master for me. Sometimes it's a challenge, but I I'm enjoying it.