In OB, where you were forced to grind for +5's, getting them made it a bit too easy, so I would do a bit of grinding, but turn the difficulty up a couple notches every few levels. Fallout, what the hell was that? Harder combat means quicker levelling, when it felt far too fast anyway.
I reckon hard, not hardest for Skyrim. Seems the wolves, Orcs and bandits died too quickly in the hands on reports. The fact that even on novice, a giant could one shot you, and Necromancers and bears were a challenge, sounds good to me though.

I think it should be set up similar to this:

Dragons kill you with 1 direct hit
Other large enemies like giants, minotaurs etc kill you in only 1-2 direct hits
All other enemies that carry weapons or use magic should kill you in 3-4 hits eg goblins, skeletons (depending on the strength of weapon they are carrying)
Things like mudcrabs about 1000 hits

I like a challenge rather than running round taking a million hits and still not dying

Probably default settings for starters, but I'll turn it up a notch once I've found my way around the controls/interface.

If the difficulty settings does more than just scale the damage you take and give I might bother to play at a higher difficulty.

Im always playing of difficult that the game is made for (deffault).

I haven't played the game yet so I wouldn't know... If a dragon defeats me twice in a row after loading a save, while on hard, ill probably turn it back to normal... Dragons seem tough on any difficulty

Dead is Dead on normal difficulty until I beat it.

Then raise the difficulty to whatever the highest is and play Dead is Dead.

Default. I can't be a god if I put it on the hard setting and keep being killed off.

Generally default difficulty since in TES, hard is very broken (in Morrowind with some class it's impossible while it's super easy with others and in Oblivion, with the f****** level scaling, if you play a non combat class -like 1 combat skill and 6 such as pickpocket, acrobatics, athletics, mercantile, speechcraft...- the enemies would become stronger than you as you level up which is totally stupid...)
But since default is still too easy, I raise it by using well-thought mods (to balance Archery, to make things a little harder and suppress level scaling aberrations...) it's way better than the difficulty slider.

Probably normal. Isn't default often normal? :shrug:

Probably normal

Um.. I thought it wouldn't be possible to change the difficulty in Skyrim? Maybe I dreamed that I read that though... :unsure:

I was thinking just that too. Perhaps we shared that dream.

I havent played skyrim yet and dont know the difficulty, im guessing it will be a little easier than oblivion (since mainstream games have been getting easier over the years), im gonna be adjusting the difficulty after my taste, and i want a proper challenge out of my games.

However ive heard that Skyrim will not have adjustable difficulty setting. Am i wrong?

No slider, but five separate settings for novice, etc.

In the whole 9 years I've been playing Elder Scrolls games I have only touched the difficulty slider once. And that was toward the end of Oblivion's main quest. I completely lost interest in the main quest about 3/4 of the way through, but I wanted to see this statue in Bruma everyone was talking about. So I shoved the slider to the left, breezed through the rest of the main quest and then raced up to Bruma to see this darn statue.

Then I put the difficulty slider back on default and I haven't touched it since.

I tend to play with the default setting. Oblivion was my first TES game and I almost maxed out my speechcraft exploring the Imperial City. This gave me a bunch of levels without combat skill that made the game extremely difficult, so I had to turn it down for a time until my character wasn't so underpowered.

Probably a little harder than default, it really depends on what changes when you ramp it up a bit, apart from increased enemy health.

I would be cool if more creatures spawned at a higher difficulty.

I generally play on the normal difficulty but when you get to the high levels, (40+) you dont die, but niether do they. They take too long too kill so I end up putting the difficulty down.

With TES games I play mostly on average difficulty because upping the difficulty just results in longer battles, not harder (hope Skyrim is different).
Most games I tend to play on hard though, it seems a nice balance between average and whatever difficulty is higher than hard.
Of course I'll make it harder if I'm replaying a particular game.