Look, I understand that you feel like the majority of people who are posting these "LOLZ I'm pwnin a dragonz in 1 hit" videos are not being faithful to the spirit of Elder Scrolls games and I whole heatedly agree. I'm sure they did pick all perks to maximize a single type of damage output, used fast travel and excessive waiting and resting to boost skills as quickly as possible and even used the console to quickly experiment with different builds.

Balancing between a powergaming playstyle and a casual playstyle is certainly a challenge. If you scale things back to restrict the powergamers, the casual player will become too weak, and if you adjust for the casual gamer then the powergamer will run amok.

The ability to select a difficulty eliminates this challenge however. It is a wonderful way for players to "self-balance" their game. It should come as no surprise at all that vast numbers of players will powergame to some degree or another. And frankly, weather you choose to acknowledge it or not, the occasional player who stumbles across these "power builds" in the process of roleplaying. Many games provide high end difficulties which not only allow for powergaming, but essentially require it. Adding such a difficulty to accommodate players with some of these powerful builds would take away nothing from people who choose to heavily restrict themselves, while addressing one of the primary player complaints. How is it not a win/win situation?

At first this debate was interesting. Then I made it to page three and my eyes hurt. I just want to say... Don't let anyone tell you how to play this game. If you want to chose to immerse yourself in the world and be a weaker character throughout to improve your experience. If you want to blow through it, creat a demi god, and shelve the game, DO IT...but isn't it a little off to be telling someone else how to play a game like this? If you don't know, then you will one day figure it out! I started with P&P gaming way back in 2nd edition, back when TSR and Gary Gygax were names that people still remembered. Me? I think that Skyrim has a lot of potential. Yeah I am a min/maxer as well...too much Final Fantasy in me not to. My first character was a demi god before I started the main quest line...so I quit and made a dark-elven ranger, and I am sticking to the role of that. A Ranger, at least until I get my shouts and start to be enticed with a new magical aspect of my being. Then we will see where that goes...

Bottom line, I see replayability in this game, and will most likely continue to the point where I have logged 3-400 hours in it. That says alot! I only put 195 into FF7, and that was EPIC...

Agreed. Enchanting needs to be nerfed more than any other skill. I've said it before, I think in this thread, it should never be able to provide damage boosts bigger than the boosts you get within your chosen combat discipline (though I think once you've maxed out dual wielding, it's on par with the boost you could have gotten from enchanting). Actually, I think it might be a good thing that choosing to spend perk points on enchanting rather than combat could produce an equally viable build. Trouble is, you get enough points that you don't have to choose, so at the end of the day, picking your points intelligently (and realistically in my opinion) leads to being overpowered.

There are a few ways to address that, one being the game's difficulty, which is something a few recent games have gotten right. Two that come to mind are The Witcher 2 and Dragon Age 2 (yeah, DA2 has more things wrong with it than I'd care to mention, but one thing it has going for it is balanced combat.) Lower difficulties should be for people that want to play casually and/or handicap their builds, higher difficulties for people that want to be strategic (I think the term "professional" might be fitting - your character is a professional adventurer, they're going to do things intelligently if they want to survive.) The Witcher 2's difficulty was a bit wonky, you'd be wading through lower level stuff only to suddenly get stuck with an unbeatable boss or group, but at the end of the day its hard enough that it can remain challenging even once you've figured out all the game's secrets. DA2 had an easier time of maintaining balance in that grinding is impossible - enemies don't respawn, and there's a finite number of XP giving quests. But it was hard enough that, in order to play it on nightmare difficulty, you had to really look at what perks you were taking and how you composed your team, how you set up their tactics. You had to be an intelligent leader for your squad. Skyrim's master difficulty should maybe be hard enough that a little crafting skill grinding is required in order to survive - there'd still be lower difficulties for people that just want to explore and hear the story, or play as a non-violent alchemist wood elf or whatever.

Or they're just not legendary figures as prophesied by the Elder Scrolls. Also, its actually pretty expensive to train crafting, easily covers the cost of several houses.

Look, the PC can be exposed to all forms of crafting in 3 distinct quests. Therefore, the PC can gain an intro to understanding of what power is available to them. RPing is just as much about growth as it is about what your initial background is. Given how easy crafting is, you would have to be roleplaying an absolute idiot to not make use of it. You might say that its an abstraction of the system, but I feel that notion is arguable, with no actual answer that either of us can agree on (you appear to view it as an abstraction, I view it as a supernatural affinity the Dovakhiin has towards self improvement). If anything, it all could be explained by saying "mere mortals" don't have access to the star signs that are perks.

So please, don't use RP as an excuse to hide behind to bash those that actually think the manner in which crafting is set up is actually a fault of Skyrim.

Yes and no, OP.

First, yes, roleplaying is a great means of achieving balance. It's also a great means of upsetting balance, making yourself stronger or weaker than normal. I's variable. Second, there's no "wrong way" to play TES, and it's foolish to say so.

Actually, yes, I have. I fought a 2H bandit chief, 2H bandit outlaw, and 1H bandit outlaw who cast fire (frost on some reloads) with the other hand.

Also, there is a character in the main quest who is definitely non-magic combat oriented who owns an arcane enchanter in a secret room. I can't imagine why she would have that if warriors aren't supposed to have enchanting ability.

There is also a smith you can talk to about joining the war. The only reason he doesn't is because of his family. Obviously, this means master smiths shouldn't be good at fighting in Skyrim.

There are also draugr that combine weapons and magic. Presumably, they had those abilities before they died and didn't gain magic knowledge after their deaths.

I don't have a problem with that solution but it isn't going to happen for many reasons.

First, many people default to the highest difficulty without power-gaming and thus making it impossible will probably piss off just as many people.

Second, in an open game there are a myriad of broken builds or non-combat related builds that bethesda would have to account for if they open this balance flood-gate.

Third, no matter what they do it'll still be too easy or might end up being too hard for even power-gamers. An attempt at this would have to be carefully planned and likely wouldn't appease enough people to be worth it.

Lastly, it's an open single-player game where they allow console commands and an eventual creation kit. Bethesda doesn't seem overly concerned with difficulty as they want you to be free to break the difficulty barrier. If they wanted all-encompassing balance they would have restricted you accordingly.

My char is a Warrior with dual one-handed weapons (Combat ability), Light Armor (Stealth ability) and Restoration (Magic ability), and it's still so well balanced that even in level 43 I have to watch myself if I don't want to end up dead. And I did it by not overpowering my equipment with enchantments, and using Leather armor, which is both the one I like the most and highly satisfying to upgrade (I have currently 524 AR with a full unenchanted Leather set, with all the Light Armor perks and the Lord stone, and it's so because I spent tons of time and money looking for Fortify Smithing stuff, not only because I merely activated some perk).

And although I also have two daedric swords improved to the same level of my armor, they're also unenchanted, because my char hasn't the slightest idea of how to enchant items. Now THAT's what the op was referring to when he talked about roleplaying.

So you're not getting the point at all.

But you were talking about what makes sense, and according to this dogma, blacksmithing and enchanting as a thief does not make sense. Why? As a thief living and practising my art in Whiterun, there's a blacksmith at ten paces away. Being a thief, my natural instincts would of course be to break into the smith and have a looksie, and lo and behold; there are crafting materials laying around with books on the shelves that explains how to use them. Why would my character as a thief, and I as role-playing this thief, not make use of this newly acquired knowledge to take advantage of what smithing would do to my character and my trade? Does that make sense to you?

People defaulting to highest difficulty is a symptom of the 'achievement' generation (no age prejudice). That's not how it used to be, it's not (IMO) right.

But it seems I'm a dinosaur.

First, you're able to adjust the combat difficulty at any time. Casual gamers might have to swallow some pride and lower the difficulty, but at least the option would be available to them. They're hardly being inconvenienced. At present, the option to increase the difficulty is not available for non-casual gamers at all.

Lastly, a significant portion, if not most, gameplay effecting mods actually increase difficulty. Try playing FO3 with Arwen's Tweaks installed.

I never bashed anyone; I'm just explaining how the game appears to be balanced. The abstraction discussion isn't going to go anywhere, so I'll just say that this game isn't really about balance. I can break the difficulty with the console as well and pretend it's some weird unexplained dovakhiin power, but in the end it's fairly obvious that Bethesda was more concerned with giving us options than tightly tuning the difficulty.

If you're finding the game too easy and not having any fun it's because you're not playing in a way that's condusive to the in-game world. I've just detailed some options that work.

Role-playing by its very nature is the concept that a player has the freedom to make choices about what their character does and does not do. It's great that you decided for your character he would be ignorant of enchanting. How is it any less valid for a player to decide that, having achieved everything you did, he would explore the enchanting arts?... which everyone in the world know exist because there are enchanting tables all over the place.

What you are describing, in trying to construct a way in which players should restrict themselves in order to maintain a challenge, is in fact the EXACT OPPOSITE of roleplaying. Weighing abilities based strictly on their game mechanics, you propose various reasons players should not choose such abilities, thereby restricting the ability to roleplay.

Providing a friendly list of abilities that you consider broken even on "Master" difficulty beyond a certain level is one thing, but to accuse players of being at fault for failing to "roleplay" because they have stumbled across a build too powerful even for Master difficulty is... frankly ludicrous.

I'm having plenty of fun, its just annoying that with the knowledge I have of the game, I would have to RP an absolute idiot to not take the exact same 22+ perks every character I make. (Ab)Using crafting is obviously quite easy, and while it may be against the spirit of what is intended to be depicted, it quite clearly is not against the mechanics of how it is depicted.

My point is, telling players to enforce artificial restrictions on themselves is just not a good way to try and maintain a fun playthrough. It promotes a sort of smugness that is not healthy, and stifles actually trying to make use of all of the available options.

Well, if roleplaying is the only thing balancing the game the developers have done a mistake. They gameplay is supposed to balance the game. Personally I haven't encountered much problems here, though.

Role playing dictates that if your mage has a weakness, then it is up to you to deal with it. You can seek more effective ways to apply your destruction magic; you can take up enchanting because it helps; or you can look for other options. Alternatively, you can play a mage who stubbornly sticks to his ways and cries that the world is unfair.

All characters have at least a rudimentary enchanting skill, and all it takes to improve it is to walk up to a table, put an enchanted object on it and press the button labelled "Disenchant" and presto; you can enchant/disenchant and you even gained knowledge by doing this menial task. In order to not being able to do this, you have to self-impose restrictions on yourself to such an extent that you're basically an illiterate fool. Sure, if you want to role-play such a character, all the power to you, but I'm not going to do that.

LoL ... first time somebody told me that playing spell sword or war who can enchant stuff is wrong.

Nah.

Oh, believe me. I don't restrict myself of nothing. My Warrior is even trained in Speechcraft and Lockpicking (although with no perks in any of them), just because I use both things a lot. But I couldn't care less if my stuff is enchanted or not, or if I wear the most powerful armor/weapons or not. In fact, the only reason why I wield 2 daedric swrods is because I love their appareance. As it's the reason why I wear Leather armor. And that's part of roleplaying. I am what I want to be, and I wear what I want to wear.

And on the other side, yes, roleplaying is also about restricting yourself, because it's incredibly improbable that a char can be Arch-Mage, the Companions' Head, the favorite of Nocturnal and the Night Mother, the savior of Skyrim and an accomplished smith, enchanter, conjurer, blademaster (1h and 2h), (...), mage-thief-warrior altogether. You can't master everything in life, neither you can't be the head of everything. It's a kids-like attitude even to try to achieve that, in my opinion.

Of course, you're free to try it. But then don't complaint when you don't roleplay on a RPG and things become too easy or uninteresting. Because it'll happen to you with any other game or sport in life...each and every one of them has it's rules. Break them, and it'll also become boring.



Same as above. If you don't know how to roleplay, it's your problem. Not mine. After all, at the end of the day I'm the one who has had 130 hours with my char and it's still having fun with him.

You aren't allowed to break the rules in video games...unless you're cheating. You aren't breaking Skyrim's rules by leveling smithing, you're playing exactly within them.



You're not the arbitrator of roleplaying. I'm the one with 300 hours and wants to have even more fun.

That kind of reminds me of the saying; don't bring a knife to a gun fight. There's a reason for that saying, and that's not 'today I'll leave my good sword at home and bring something less useful instead'.

To address the combat difficulty discussed earlier. I hate to compare and use Dark Souls as an example, but I feel that if Skyrim had similar combat difficulty as Dark Souls then it could be a near perfect game. Even at higher levels in Dark Souls with better gear, you could still get owned by lower level minions. You had to pay attention in combat, or you got owned. Now I'm not saying to make the combat "as hard" as in Dark Souls, I'm just trying to say that a lot of the over powered character complaints would go away if combat was more difficult and engaging...especially the dragons.

Skyrim is still a RPG, although watered down. And the point of RPGs is, by definition, roleplaying. If you don't roleplay, then don't complaint about the game being bored. It's like trying to play soccer with a tennis racket.



I wasn't trying to be, and I'm far from it. I was just pointing out that I'm still having fun when roleplaying, when surely a lot of non-roleplayers have already thrasted the game.



Are you referring to my actual armor? Because at 524 AR, I don't find it useless at all...and against mages, I already have the Become Ethereal shout plus the 25% Magic Resistance of the Lord Stone. Why exactly would I need a full enchanted Legendary Daedric armor?

How disappointing, and here I was, all wooled over the thought that I knew what I was doing when I flipped that floppy labelled; Bard's Tale into the drive of my Amiga 1000 back in 1986