Hellow forums

I wish to reflect on a body of forum posts that read something like this:

1. I play at maximum difficulty, because I'm awesome

2. I (ab)use a combination of alchemy / enchanting / smithing to create items (that are likely to be stronger than the game was balanced for)

3. I use builds that are maximally effective

4. Life is easy

And I find myself asking... "Why?"

Why push the difficulty slider up, if you are going to mitigate that difficulty by tediously maxing alchemy, then using potions to buff your smithing past 100, then smith while wearing enchanted +smithing items in a time-consuming absurd dance in mitigating that extra difficulty you just invoked? [I'm probably abbreviating, i'm sure some players do more than this]. Isn't this completely removing the true functionality of the difficulty slider, which is to allow players to set the game at a level that is challenging for them? Why bother pushing the difficulty up in settings, only to spend hours bringing it back down again sitting in town crafting? Are we really just playing to earn bragging rights?

I guess my critique is more centered on the synergistic "train x number of crafting skills to buff each other before making gear", rather than any one crafting skill used in isolation.