Ouch! My mouse clicking finger!

To keep the game a challenge you have to impose rules on yourself which majorly revolve around the limitation or even restriction of Alchemy, Smithing, Enchanting and Sneak.

Oblivions levelling and scaling system was absoutely dire. Skyrims is better, the only problem is poor balancing on the players side of things where power is gained too quickly and too easily.

I will admit TES is the only series where even I think twice about setting it on the hardest difficulty.

I typically set any game I play on hard since normal is typically too easy, but TES just gets trivial with difficulty. It stops being about challenging myself and proving I can do it and becomes more of a patience game because the enemies simply take twice as long to kill without being more threatening as a result of the extra "difficulty."

I have a dead-is-dead character that utilized nothing but Smithing and still became unkillable. Ultimately stopped playing entirely because it just ceased to be challenging. :/

You are correct. I played OB for 3 solid years but if it hadn't been for the early arrival of OOO, I would have quit after the first year if not sooner. The only way I could play vanilla OB would be to rigorously under level in order to top out around level 15 or even less.

play on legendary and not have every enemy in the game look like a stuffed animal that you could tear apart. just play on the highest difficulty you can. although i hate it when people say legendary is too hard because they play on the lower difficulties like adept and apprentice all the time and never have to actually plan or think when they fight and never use potions. that all changes the higher you go, which is why i like it. skyrim's combat is already iffy, but putting it on legendary with mediocre gear gives me the full combat "experience" i guess you could say

do a scavenger playthrough. I usually do it in FO because it feels natural but it will work here, these are rules.

Drop/put away everything you own, wether selling,putting in house, or just dropping be rid of it

Use only things you find in the world No buying weapons/armor/ammo (arrows)

no fixing things (or in this case upgrading)

How many times have you played the game? Did you run to all the guilds? Join the DB?

I'm confident the answer to the question is "Yes", which is why many people had a problem with the game. The character design phase wasn't there to build a Mage-Archer-Paladin character. It was there to focus on very specific skills, then play the game utilizing them.

Most people didn't do this, and as I said before, they paid for it. No one disputes trying to level up two offensive skills makes a character weak, so how is it when people try, they blame the game?

It makes no sense to me. I've played this game many times, because I took some time on my first game to understand what it was doing. Once I realized it, then I adapted accordingly.

I won't say I didn't run into a few creatures now and then who easily out-leveled me, but I also didn't stand there and try to pump the thing with 30 arrows. I bailed, and came back when I was stronger.

If you doubt this isn't an issue, then look at Skyrim players who marched up to High Hrothgar. Ask them how many tried to kill the troll, rather than, you know, run around it?

I did. Last year. Over 90% said they tried to kill it.

So please don't try and convince me Oblivion didn't do it right. I know what I played, and aside from a few skills affecting the overall level, it remains the best RPG of the series.

Disclaimer: I haven't played any other TES game, but of the complaints I've read of Morrowind, gamers got ticked off people could be killed (closing off quests) and items could be sold (closing off quests), and they complained about the 10 swings and 1 hit combat system.

Oblivion answered with a scaling game based on skill, essential NPCs, and undroppable quest items. Gamers complained it was too hard.

Now, we've Skyrim.

I'm getting the sense the games aren't the problem.

That's what Exploits & glitches are for.

being that over-powered shouldn't be able to be obtained from normal means of game play.

Challenges aren't the same when you have to force them onto yourself

ha no I never play a jack of all trades or try to do it all with 1 character but Oblivions system is so rigid that it doesn't really allow for that if 1 so choosed. I mentioned the issues with their scaling and leveling, some people prefer a stone-like setup but I say the more freedom the better and while there's many things OB did better, Skyrim is better in this respect. Relying on only major skills that couldn't be switched later to level up was a poor design imo whereas Skyrim addressed that by allowing every skill to work towards leveling. I thought it was dumb that later in the game many enemies were wearing Daedric armor or using Daedric weapons which should be a specialty item reserved for only special individuals. I also loathed having to carry many repair hammers but that's another matter.
It's fine if you prefer Oblivions system but many did not so they changed it for Skyrim just like i'm sure the next TES will have a different system...they never seem to keep the same setup.

There's no balance or challenge to the game when the player simply decides how much they want to weaken their character's stats or buff the enemies' to create the illusion of difficulty when really the combat is so poorly designed it just makes things more or less tedious.

These are terrible excuses for a lack of a genuinely engaging combat system and well balanced character building options.

I shouldn't be able to "do whatever the [censored] I want to do" because that quickly makes the game dull when I can run around being a God amongst insects. If you want to see what that kind of approach to gameplay devolves into check out Saint's Row 2.

You could always just kick butt, imagine your character is a badass, it would go with the story pretty well don't you think?

If you want a challenge go play frogger, I've never considered the point of this game to be challenging.