Do you feel the games ever do them justice? Some artifacts are unique items with common abilities, others are common items with unique abilities. Some artifacts keep the same appearance and abilities while time goes on, others seem to continually change.
... but none of them eever seem to be all that powerful, especially in Oblivion and Skyrim. Regardless of the lore behind them, their creator(s), or their purpose, they're little more than gimmicks as of late.

Artifacts shouldn't be some ultra-powered win button.

That was one of the worst things about Morrowind, every 10th dungeon had an arficat, and getting even a couple of them turned the game into a stupid easy faceroll.

I actually use the artifacts from Oblivion and syrim, becuase they dont break the game.

like how the skeleton key is supposed to open any lock once a day but in skyrim and oblivion it's just an unbreakable lock-pic just to name one of the top of my head

Fixed.

I don't care if they're super powerful, but I would like some good random ones that are hard to acquire.

Then what's the point in them being artifacts? You read about them in books, learning that they're items of immense power, so it's a major letdown when you actually discover them, see just how mediocre they really are, and throw them into storage.

Honestly, they should be an ultra-powered win button. If that's how they're described, that's how they should be. It's one thing to scale down the population of a city from 30,000 to 30, but to throw handicaps on artifacts for the sake of balance in an unbalanced world doesn't really seem worth the effort.

@arnier, exactly. Another one that comes to mind is the Gauldur Amulet. That really pissed me off.

To get their unqiue effects? Smithing pretty much artifact as good as any other tiem in the game.

And no, they shouldn't, for the same reason that hsouldnt put back in the broken ass spell making system from older games just becuase lore says spell making exists.

In a game, gameplay comes before EVERYTHING, including lore, and balance is part of gameplay. Games are games first, and a fictonal world second.

If gameplay comes before lore, the RPG genre has no reason to exist.

There has to be some degree of changes to actually make the game work, I get that. It would be impossible to have, say, 3,000 people in any given city, town, or village. But when you have legends that tell of immensely powerful artifacts, books that tell of immensely powerful artifacts, and events in the game world itself that are driven by the existence of immensely powerful artifacts, the artifacts in-game should be immensely powerful.

By that logic no game has any reason to exist...... except they do, which is to provide a fun game to play.

Up until the point they start to ruin the game's balance, thus making the gameplay, the part of the game that is important, broken.

The artifacts should be powerful, and in an unconventional or difficult place to get to. In Morrowind I used unique rings, the cuirass of the saviours hide and a unique weapon all the time. In Skyrim, right now I just use the Bloodskal Blade.

As opposed to making a one-of-a-kind Daedric artifact, or an artifact created by one of the best mages Tamriel has known, be outdone by a common loot drop.

If the game's balance is ruined by a player getting these artifacts, then the game balance is already bad IMO.

I'll agree with you when a game with as much lore behind it as an elder scrolls game does the lore should came first, example- if I get told theres a sword in the world so powerfull that it can cut the world in two with a single swing and I get it and all it does is absorb health or something like that I would be sorely disappointed (looking at you miraak with an absorb stamina enchant)

come to think about it all the artefacts can be outdone by yourself if you perk properly the only one I haven't been able to replicate via enchantment/perks is the ward produced by the spell breaker shield

oohh just remembered that mehrunes razor took a power down between oblivion and skyrim