"How quickly you level the skills is meaningless. Once you get both skills to 100 the gear you create trivializes the game, whether you're level 10 or level 70. Keep in mind this is without any synergies applied to either skill; if you use fortify enchanting potions, fortify smithing enchantments and/or potions, or any other sort of skill enhancing items, things simply become even more skewed."


Yeah, but at what level are you reaching 100 smithing? Shouldn't you be able to control your gameplay minutely at higher levels? One easy fix is to not turn all of your gear into "legendary" items.

As long as we only talk about the "spam" exploit, no.

Fixed.

EDIT: Oh, and I'll reiterate -- the level at which you reach 100 in the skill is meaningless. What matters is what you can do with the skill once you reach that level.

I agree with this. Whenever I see people complaining about "needing to self gimp", I get a bit confused. For one, coming up with a set of guidelines for a new character's always been part of RPGs - picking your class, what skills you're going to focus on, what playstyle you want to pursue, what things you don't want to do.... we've been doing that for decades, in both pen-and-paper and digital. Where's the "self gimping"?

(For two, people have always been trying to come up with "extra" ways to challenge themselves in games. I don't recall Diablo 2 players whining about the fact that they "had" to do Naked Runs for because they wanted the game to be harder - the celebrated the fact that they were so awesome at the game.)


But, then, I'm not an instinctive powergamer - I don't need to constantly hold myself back from doing the 110% Most Effective Thing? at all times. I guess, for people with that personality trait, it might be difficult and/or annoying.




Of course, there can be a bit of difference between "Legendary" and "Legendary"..... if you don't have the full complement of bonus items (and especially if you haven't done multiple rounds of Alch->Ench->Smith->Alch), "Legendary" isn't all that much more. My first character's "Legendary" Daedric Blade (with one-handed bonuses on worn gear & perks) was around 100 damage. (around level 50) Yeah, it's pretty good, but it's not 600 damage Legendary. :shrug:

If you consider the arc of the character however, with a creature cap at level 50, the majority of creatures are now below your level. I don't think its unfair to assume, that Bethseda expected the standard story arc for a character to exceed level 40 to 50. The final 10 levels really should be the "overcome obstacles" point in the story. The problem really occurs is that people grow attached to a single character and push them further and further up levels, to "see everything" with one person.

Generally, if the game is split between 2 or more characters, the problem is a lot rarer.

The optimisation of a character for damage per second, simply isn't something I believe this game considers to be its core audience. I don't think I've seen a single argument that TES games have ever been about optimisation instead of freedom for individual stories.

In a perfect world we would have both and everyone could be happy, but I don't have the capability to think of a system that would allow both. Every attempt I've seen is deeply flawed even more so than just being one or the other.
Even the on the surface simplicity of the addition of a Super-l33t Master difficulty that gets banged around every so often would basically come down to all the hardcoe gamers choosing a single character archetype to complete the game. Then they would complain its only possible with one type of character and demand that all the skills are made perfectly balanced like an MMO. If Bethseda follow this line of reasoning constantly to its bitter end you end up with a game that doesn't look like a TES game at all with even less skill and story, and the hardcoe "beat the game" gamers can deride the roleplayers whining in the forums that their game got destroyed. The road to hell is paved with...

I am willing to bet, it never, ever occurred to Bethseda that some of their players would actually sit, and calculate the optimal method to pick up +5 in each stat in Oblivion, to ensure maximum value per level. It would also seem apparant from Skyrims design, that they went out of their way to try and reduce this mentality.

I shouldn't have to say this, but its easier to list my argument in this way, but obviously, and clearly, is just opinion.

Fixed.

I so agree. It's all about choices. People choose what to do in this game. You don't have to follow any one path or do any one thing. You don't have to be poor, you don't have to be rich. People who complain after they exploit something are just there to complain..because they can.

Nor does anyone else. All you have to do to break the game is take the wrong skill combination.

Does this mean that the skill combination is somehow broken? No, not in my mind. It does mean that Bethesda should make an effort to increase the challenge of the game, however.

Ignoring the legitimate bonuses that a skill tree gives you is not a "fix."

Ex:

"Oh wow, the perks that increase your proficiency with Warhammers are overpowered. I guess since I already took them, I'll just stop using Warhammers forever, or reroll my character. Fixed!" :rolleyes:

like a lot of things in life, people feel they shouldn't be responsible for their actions and someone else is to blame.

(i'm dumb and spilt hot coffee on my lap... not my fault, its mcdonalds!)

The key to your quote is 'extra' ways to challenge themselves - that's just fine as it implies the game 'out of the box' provides suitable challenge. When using a natural logical progression of available skills renders the game too easy, imo, there is an issue.

I dont mean stacking crafting, I mean billy-basic, out of the box abilities.

Sneak? Nope
Conjuration? Nope
Illusion? Nope

Those are just from the top of my head, using those items DOES render the game 'too easy' (imho). The fault of that can be placed in many locations - mainly the AI tbh but it doesnt change it.

People bang on about RP this, and immersion that all the while ignoring the massive elephant in the room which is what if I don't want to role play a complete buffon? For example, do people appreciate just how immersion breaking it is to purposefully be seen as a sneaker? I can be 12" away from an enemy looking right at me in a lit corridor and he CANT see me.

But it does solve your problem. Look, I understand wanting a more challenging game, and I certainly wouldn't mind if Bethesda released some "ultra hardcoe" mode for Skyrim, but I do not want my ability to regulate my own gameplay nerfed because others don't know how to regulate theirs.

In every Elder Scrolls game, a god like character can be, but is not guaranteed, by the time one reaches level 40 to 50. Been this way since Daggerfall. However, if you are playing the game, by the time most characters are in the 50's, one has done most or all the quests in the game anyway or has achieved what that set out to achieve with that character. Morrowind, which had no level scaling, but did have areas that you needed to be a certain level to survive to be in, was pretty much done once you were in the 20's to 30's. By that point, you were probably done with the MQ and most Faction quests, but the character no longer needed to be leveled. Then again, these games have never been about character leveling so focusing on that is kind of missing the point.




What is?

Explain to me how Bethesda failing to account for the skill bonuses that they themselves bestowed upon character creation when they scaled the difficulty settings for the game is in any way the fault of the player.

Ideally level scaling is supposed to account for this - power leveling smithing should raise your character level enough to keep the enemies challenging. Unfortunately the way your level is calculated is completely divorced from the actual combat effectiveness of the skills - power leveling to 100 level lockpicking is not going to make you as combat effective as power leveling to 100 enchanting, but its going to have the same effect on the level of the enemies you face. One fix would be to make the "level" number that enemy scaling is based on be a weighted average of your skills, so onehanded would be weighted higher than speech, etc. Another would be to split the skills up into groups - maybe combat, crafting, and non-combat. So one handed, destruction, blocking etc. would be combat skills, while lockpicking, speech, and pickpocketing would be non-combat. You could maybe get one perk point for each group per level, so that the non-combat skills don't become throwaway at higher difficulties. The "level" would be a weighted average of your combat skills multiplied by a weighted average of your crafting skills, to account for synergy between skillsets (might just want to base the combat numbers on whatever your highest combat skill is, since you're typically only using one combat style at a time.)

I dont see how it would be, if it suddenly got too hard for your character you could always...you know....drop the difficulty?

I mean, role players dont care about difficulty right?

In Daggerfall, there was no limit to the number of quests you can do. In Skyrim, this has again become the case.

I'll be honest and say that I used to feel as you do, here. However, by accounting entirely for the way the game scales a character's power level in the difficulty settings of a game, you account for a larger variety of playstyles; something that the developers of an open world sandbox game should strive to achieve.

Also, keep in mind that when you powerleveled and optimized characters in previous games, you could literally make them invincible, so no amount of difficulty scaling would have fixed this.

not to start an argument but i thought skyrim was open to play the way you want. if you want to level up you skills before playing the game you can. if you want to level your skills up naturally through regular progression you can.
i really don't see the problem.

and no, as the title says, people who max out skills then complain should not be taken seriously because they didn't take the game seriously.

Wtf exploit? ! it anit an exploit if u are the only one playing the game.

I'm glad the poll shows how much people care about this issue.

And I entirely agree with you on that point. What I'm lobbying for is an increased difficulty level; nothing more, nothing less.

Smithing/Enchanting...

Yes, smithing and enchtanting level naturally so long as you don't take advantage of the easy leveling mechanics but that still doesn't explain why it has to be that easy. Smithing would be more challenging if expensive materials were required for improving high level smithing, and if primary source for materials was wildlife and mining instead of black smiths.

And what happens when you reach a high enough level that the skills become overpowered legitimately, and then Bethesda releases it's plethora of expansions and DLC?

Again, the rate at which you level the skill is meaningless, only the end result.

I do, I made a sneaky character rolling on master 100% from the start. Up until, I would say approximately level 17 it was about as tricky as I'd expect. From 17+ its a doddle.

0 crafting, using....steel daggers, light armour, no potions, no follower and sneak is thoroughly busted. Which makes it too easy.



I await the reasons as to how I'm exploiting/doing it wrong/powergamingmin/maxing with excitement.......