It isn't the default.
You can go through the game making items as you go. Making the next tier of items and enhancing them when you have the mats. You can make them with mats you harvest yourself. You can cast spells at the appropriate levels and advance as you believe is intended.

No one is making you "cheat". When I was leveling my Warrior I didn't know I could just make Iron Daggers and get 100. I was actually trying to make Dwarven and Orcish items until I got a quest to make an Iron item. And then I found out I still got a big chuck of experience for it...

I know there's a God mode and I choose not to use it. I know there are console commands to give me every item in the game and I choose not to use it. Why can't you choose not use an exploit?

Am I the only one who doesn't want the crafting system to mirror wow? I'm glad we have crafting but it doesn't feel like elder scrolls to me.
The crafting system should be inspired by the already stellar lock picking mechanics.

There is a lockpicking mini game that gives you visual, tactile and audio feedback that isn't clear until you practice it through trial and error.
It is possible to pick a master level lock at apprentice skill, you'll probably just break 20-30 lockpicks to do it. Adding risk, and the rush of opening a lock well beyond your skill.
If you pick a lock well beyond your skill level, you'll get better loot and several skill points to boot.

IMHO blacksmithng and enchanting need to have this same design vision.
We should have several blacksmithing mini games that do the same thing. I'm not a designer or modded so I can't tell you what those are, but perhaps the grinding mini game could mean rocking your controller back and forth and paying attention to visual and vibration cues.. I should risk my resources and at low skill, I may have a chance to create an epic weapon, it just won't be very likely, and I'll probably burn through a ton of ingots. I could also risk breaking my weapon or reducing its quality. Failures should give some skill and spectacular successes should give several points. The skill tree could be redesigned to include other skills such as ore tracking ( ore would appear near you on the compass) for example. Obviously the mini game would get easier at higher skill level.

Lockpicking is Fun, smithing, while good, is really a copy of mmo crafting. Elder scrolls is about exploration, player choice, and doing things you probably shouldn't be doing but still have a small chance to succeed. I feel this would satisfy that vision better than the current one.

The balance issues of enchanting and smithing would be mitigated as overpowered weapons would be physically difficult to make and based more on chance combined with skill.

I never bought a single thing for black smithing from merchants. I spammed hide bracers a quadrillion times from leathers I get from animal hides I "find" in the wild. Practice makes perfect. But if you spend your entire career making Hide armor I don't know how that helps in forging Ebony, and Dragon bones/scales.

Smithing isn't broken, in fact it works exactly as intended. If you sit there and smith all day, you get good at it and can make some really good stuff.

If you put bread into a toaster and depress the lever the bread comes out toasted.

Smithing is way too easy to level, IMO. Iron Daggers all the way to 100 is just completely stupid. I have all three crafting, my Alchemy/Enchanting are at 65-70 and I have really put some time into them, making me feel like I'm really progressing and it's not a total faceroll. Smithing just levels too fast got it to 100 in probably an hour.

Also, why can't I make Daedric Bow/Daggers if I took the light armor path, do I really have to waste perks on the heavy side of the tree when it's completely worthless to my character?

Nobody accidentally maxes Alchemy/Enchanting/Smithing, takes all the perks necessary, then folds Alchemy and Enchanting until they get these perfect +Smithing potions and perfect +Smithing armor enchants until they can make ultimate weapons and armor.
That isn't an "accident" by any definition of the word. It's not by default. You have to TRY to make this actually happen.

My Warrior has full Daedric armor that I haven't even made Fine level yet. None of it is even enchanted. My Daedric axe only has Soul Trap on it and my Enchanting is 100 and I have the extra effect perk.

You should get way more experience by crafting more advanced armor, and the requirement for each "level" should increase exponentially much, much more for every level. Lockpicking is also kind of OP when it comes to gaining levels with your character. It feels like 50% of my skill increases are from lockpicking, and I'm not even a thief-type character

There you go again with your absurd comparisons. Using god mode, using exploits, etc.. is not the same as making 200 daggers. Your not even on the same planet with these comparisons.

Making one set of gear isn't enough to bring you up to the next tier, so you have to make crap pieces soon or later. At that time most gamers figure out how easy it is to level smithing. 90% of players are just going to skip gear and go for the best when they figure out how easy it is. That's the majority of people play games.. why go for the OK armor when you can go to the best armor for 2 minutes more of work? This is why there are limits in place for every game known to man. Level requirements. Unlocking stuff by finding things. Killing a strong boss that drops a required item to craft something. Etc, etc. You always need to do something to prove your progress before you can get something stronger. Skyrim has NONE of these requirements, it's 100% do what you want when you want. This is good and bad. Smithing is one of the cases where it's so easy to max at the start of the game it's just ridicious. It should be harder, and have less rewards.

If I had my way, smithing wouldn't even be able to make the best items in the game. It would only be able to improve the best items in the game (which would be found in dungeons off bosses).



Both my friend and I bought the game on launch, and we both ended up doing it. The whole point of playing (in my opinion) is to get stronger, that's why I play RPGs. Figuring out professions and how to min/max them is one of the steps in that process. It doesn't even take "perfect" potions/enchants to one shot almost everything on master. You can do it with merchant bought potions and smithing/alchemy gear found in dungeons.

So you have 100 enchanting and a inferior weapon that you haven't improved/enchanted yet even though you could. Congrats on limiting your character? You are proving the point that enchanting/smithing is broken. No one should have to weaken their character or not use skills they developed because they are overpowered.

I'm really confused on why you are so concerned with fighting this? If this problem doesn't affect you then why do you care if it gets changed? Seems like you are here just to attempt to piss people off.

And this is the part I 100% disagree with, from you, from "EasyMode" (gee, that name doesn't suggest a certain attitude toward gaming), and from carrot.

I do not remotely see how, for some player not approaching the game from some niche point of view (like, being completely hyped on "grinding" things in MMOs, for instance), how camping a vendor to farm bulk crafting materials and grind out hundreds of Specific Cheap Item? can be considered "common sense".

It seems far from common sense to me, honestly, since it's going far out of your way to NOT "play the game".

It's a niche powergamer attitude, not "general" play by the "average" player.


Not to me, at least.




It really feels like you're projecting a MMO powergamer/grinder/farmer viewpoint onto everyone around you. :shrug:

No, to fix smithing, you need to have skill relative to the value of said items...

10gold = 10 points earned (Dagger) Need to make 120 to level
400gold = 400 points earned (Steel) Need to make 30 to level
1200gold = 1200 points earned (Dragon) Need to make 1 to level

Each level, adds 1200 required to get to the next level...

1 dragon-suit, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 = level 10 (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10=55 dragon-suits made or 6600 daggers. Just for example.)

How they do it...

10 items, 11 items, 12 items, 13 items... 20 items, 21 items, ... 210 items (Maxed, level 100)

Because it isn't an exploit!!!

Crafting gear or crafting daggers is not an exploit.
Leveling up because you craft is not an exploit.
Buying materials to make Iron Daggers easily is not an exploit.

I want to level my crafting, but I do not want to be able to 1 shot a Dragon on Master because I crafted.
I want to level my crafting, but I do not want it to raise my combat level (which there is no good reason why it should)
I want to level my crafting, but the fact that after only 20 some odd minutes I have entered into a new available tier of items is absurd.

Yeah I level a ton from lockpicking too, but that's because I obsessively unlock everything I see.

I would agree a system where better armors level you, and lower ones level you less and less is fine. Then again I won't let it affect me, so if it doesn't get fixed I won't care too much.

Everytime you go to town.. you buy iron from one of the 20 NPCs and craft with it. It hasn't nothing to do with camping NPCs. You go clear a dungeon, come back buy ingots, craft, repeat. 3 hours later max smithing. That's what both my friend and I did when we played and we both ruined the game for ourselves. We weren't even communication when playing, we both ended up doing it though. Seems like many other players did too.

I guess if you consider thinking ahead about character development a "MMO powergamer" viewpoint then yes you are 100% correctly. I guess I don't just start a game and plug stats into random slots and put absolutely no thought into what i'm doing. I surely hope most people don't do that.. I like to use my head and plan things out a bit. It's sad that games have gotten to the point where if you put any thought into character developement you absolutely destroy everything.

Why are you so concerned with what OTHER gamers are doing in a single player game? "Nerfing" the actual game settings affects everyone. It's needed in MMOs to keep everyone balanced and paying their monthly fees.
You can self nerf (like I did by not enhancing my armor and weapons) but you're so used to game developers doing it for you that you don't know how to do it yourself.
Are we back to my original assumption? That you're trying to prove your better than your friends? There are LOTS of MMOs out there man.

FTFY

The problem is that the starting point should be balanced and challenging. In order to upset that, you should have to cheat and modify it yourself - not the other way around.

I shouldn't have to turn godmode off, I should have to turn godmode on.

See the difference?

I'm not concerned with what others are doing. Unlike you, i'm posting here because this is ruining a entire part of the game for me. Enchanting/Smithing needs to be ignored completely or you become to powerful. This affects me and my game. I don't want to have to ignore entire aspect of the game to be able to enjoy it. You can't seem to grasp this or why people are mad about this. You are the one posting here for what seems like no other reason than to disagree with people. You tell me not to care what others are doing, but why are you posting here telling us we shouldn't be doing this and that? It seems you are the one that cares how others are playing...

Once again, every single post you bring up MMOs or WoW. Why? MMOs have nothing to do with Skyrim, I don't know why you keep bringing them up over and over. How am I suppose to be proving that I am better than my friends in a single player game? What is your logic?

All I ask is for a game that is balanced enough that I can play and not one shot everything in the game on the hardest difficulty. If you aren't experiencing this, then leave the thread and don't worry about it. Some people developed their characters better than others, and those people should not be punished by making the game so incredibly easy that its unplayable. There is a difficulty slider for a reason, to suit different needs. If we are able to make gear so powerful, we should (atleast) be able to crank the difficulty up to the point where it's still a challenge. Although that is more than a bandaid then actually fixing the smithing/enchanting problem, it's better than nothing. Being able to one shot anything on the highest difficulty cannot be working as intended, and i'm not about to go make new gear and make it weaker just to counter the balancing issues. I'm simply playing different games until this is fixed by a patch or mod.

That's weird because I play on Expert. I have a Daedric War Axe that I enhanced with 100 Smithing and a +20% Smithing potion and I cannot 1 shot a Dragon... It takes several hits to actually take him down.
But I didn't enchant +xx% one handed damage and fold alchemy/enchanting until my smithing was high enough to make my axe 500 damage either.
The game scales. When I can craft better armor my survival naturally goes up so I level and then the mobs scale to my survivability.
If you crafted the items with the ore you found and the ingots you fought for it wouldn't be 20 minutes. You chose to wait/buy/wait/buy/wait/buy...

Don't become a game developer if you think glitches and exploits isn't worthy of fixing. Game masters hate power players, and they also like making their life miserable. The game is our game master, and should act accordingly. You probably can't eliminate power gaming, but you can make steps to make it so painful to do it acts as a deterrent to do so.

To me it just boils down to complete lack of logic, where coding easiness takes precedence. Creating iron daggers improving your skill when you're skilled enough to soon master daedric smithing? It's just not logical. Same as "you don't become a master chef from cooking teawater all your life - you learn from more advanced challenges".

People min-max in D&D as well, and they create power-chars that dominate all the standard Monster Manual mobs. The Dungeon Master then increases the difficulty of the game by min-maxing NPC's and fudging dice rolls. This is NOTHING NEW in gaming, hell it has been that way since the 70's. The problem isn't the game, it's self-entitled gamers that break the game and then whine about it.

You created your characters own problem, Bethesda ALLOWED this because some people have god-complexes and want to be overpowered. Other people just play the game and explore the world on master difficulty without min-maxing and are extremely challenged. Others play on the easiest setting and don't min-max and just feel powerful in general. But guess what? You dictate your own fun.

If you think you become too powerful using crafting/alchemy, you could do what most blacksmiths do-SELL the gear. Or hang it on your wall. Just because you craft the Armor of Destroy the entire province of Skyrim doesn't mean you need to wear it. That's what I did in Oblivion. Made bad-ass gear and sold it or put it in my trophy room.

Who doesn't? Isn't that part of the reason why you're going into dungeons? To get loot?

No matter what type of character - whether mage, warrior or thief - I'd bet lockpicking is almost always among the top skills.

I am posting here because there are people like you screaming "I can't help myself Bethesda! But don't just nerf my game! NERF XANNON'S GAME TOO!" I want Bethesda to leave everything the way it is. Skyrim is not an MMO that needs constant balancing. I am completely happy with it's vanilla release and I don't need whiners like you changing it on me.

You are voicing your opinion and so am I. I want things to stay exactly how they are.

YOU are ruining that part of the game for yourself. You did this to yourself. Using exploits to advance your Smithing so you can make the best items in the game is just as bad as using console commands to do it. You CHOSE to. You only have yourself to blame son.

if you think spending half your time in a menu to craft 200 daggers you don't even need is common sense there really is no sense in arguing with you XD
it's not really so much an argument about balance or anything but more about what each player expects from a game
personally I expect huge adventures and epic fights
not slaving over a grind stone to make 200 daggers (which comes down to pressing a button a lot in some menu)

so really nerfing the smithing because you feel tedious labour is somehow what makes videogames would really svck for the rest of us who just want to do some quest and maybe craft the occasional item or 2
it would obligate us to having to do the boring tedious work you enjoy so much in order for it to have any use

yes, perhaps you're right about it being an essential part of rpg's in the past
but that doesn't do anything to validate it as a sensible mechanic in a modern game
there's more people playing this game than just you and it can't be tailored to your every need
plenty I don't really like but I have the sense to see the devs aren't trying to appeal to me and me alone with this game.

Just a musing observation here, but had this been done in the game to begin with Im almost certain that there would be tons of threads saying:

"Why the @#%@ cant i smith good items? I spend all this time leveling smithing and i can just go questing and find better stuff! This is broken! Beth needs to do something about smithing being so useless!"

Smithing isn't OP.

It's the stupid powerful enchants and alchemy potions that push it over the edge.