Thing is, a player shouldn't have to limit him- or herself in order to keep the game even remotely balanced.

... Can't possibly argue that. First char, Redguard ebony-clad warrior. Switched to an imperial assassin, and suddenly the game was something else entirely.

Reminds me of the people who say, "I've played the game over 150 hours in the last 10 days, and the caves are getting boring". WTF? You think? Maybe try taking a break for a few hours.

Then your playing the wrong game. TES has NEVER EVER been balanced. The spirit of the entire series is unbalance. If you're burning your way through all the skills and abilities to create super man, you're doing it wrong.

See, the people at Bethesda still believe their players are "big boys" and they know how to use self-control every once in a while. All the other game devs out there have decided we're a bunch of whiny little ADD children and need to have everything perfectly balanced so we don't hurt ourselves.

I don't see anything wrong with Skyrim personally although I do understand some of the complaints. Not surprised about Marriage, I knew that would be bad the second they 1st announced it.

Would you rather have a relatively shallow marriage system, or no marriage system at all?

One thing the "stop me before I exploit again" and "I shouldn't be physically able to accomplish this so fast" crowd seem to forget is that not all of us have that kind of time. Do you guys have jobs and families? Household maintenance? There are a lot of people out there that will take MONTHS to approach 100 hours in game. If the game was "balanced" around your obsessive need to exploit every possible mechanic to it's utmost mathematical advantage, it would become largely too difficult and unplayable for the rest of the "average" folk out there.

I don't want to have to make Skyrim my second job to have any hope of making my character a master craftsman sometime this year. Every player that's talking about maxing out crafting skills in a matter of hours IS using fast travel and the 48 hour inventory respawn to simply grind those skill levels up. I find it quite odd that you cannot logically understand why this is purely an "exploit" of the system and why closing those exploits would have a largely negative impact on all the rest of the people out there who are just trying to enjoy the role-playing experience without worrying about the most efficient way possible to sidestep the "game" and play "grind fest" instead.

So if the game doesn't fulfill my expectations, I'm supposed to use my "imagination" and pretend that it does?! Do you realize how stupid that sounds?

And why should you care what I or anybody else thinks about the game? People have different opinions on the game, and a forum is for sharing those opinions. Every developer, designer and artist knows that without realistic critique they won't evolve to create better products. They thrive on feedback and it shouldn't always be positive. Trying to silence other players just because they don't agree with your opinion does the developers you so admire a disservice.

Balance is a blessing and developers who can achieve it truly understand what they have created by adding different things.

I highly doubt bethesda deliberately added alchemy and enchanting combo that allows for smithing boosting on purpose. If they did, I'd sincerely know why on earth they want to deliberately break their own game. You can't defend a badly designed feature of the game by saying they assumed the fans to be "big boys" and not use it. In the end, 100% chameleon enchantment in oblivion and the combo in Skyrim both make the game boring for most players because what's the point of playing the game after becoming a god of gods?

I agree with the OP. The majority of complaints about balancing have been the result of players bending the system. They've done it to themselves and have only themselves to blame. TES games have never been balanced. Add to this player perspective; one players notion of a perfect balance is another players notion of a horribly balanced system.

Very good point. I have a wife, 3 kids, and a full time job. I have only an hour or two a night to play Skyrim. When I sit down to play, I make the most of my time by focusing my character as much as possible. I know it's possible to grind my blacksmithing skill for a nice new set of armor, but I'd rather spend my time doing something more productive and fun like dungeon crawling for a set of armor. Maxing out my character in every category would take me years to do with the time that I have - and be extremely boring.

Hah!! You should see Morrowind then if you thought that was bad. You could get 100% invisibility, chameleon, sanctuary enchanted onto a ring and pwn everything that moved.

I'm actually pretty sure that most of the unbalance was, indeed, deliberate in Skyrim. You're telling me that they've been doing this kind of thing for years in their games, and that they accidentally let this happen in Skyrim? I don't think so.

I m totally with you but for a single detail, Bethesda doesn t give enought gameplay choices for the player right of the box. For example what would it cost to give options like: disable HUD, or dsable hud mission cues, etc.

I am the kind of player that like challenge, i don t run trought the game just to finish it, not even FPS.

EXample: i haven t finished Torchlight yet cause i only play hardcoe very high dificulty, and i always die at some point.

It gives much more bucks for the run, and in he end you end with less crappy games on the shelf, cause you selected more.

edit: wrong thread

Well then the answer is simple - dont do it. You have to max out 3 skills and sink a load of perks into them. And to be quite honest it doesn't take a genius to figure out that vastly improving the high-end gear in this manner is going to give the results that it does.

You might as well use the level select cheat on sonic 1 to warp you to the last boss and then moan about how the devs put it in there.

It is there for those who want it. Its not hard to, y'know, spend your perks elsewhere? Yeah my first character will be a tank, I like being a wrecking ball. My next character will be a magical assassin. After that I might try a travelling merchant and see how long I can keep the svcker alive. Role playing, its the name of the genre.

Dear Darkflame, either you didn't read the OP and what followed on the entire thread or you're just lumping on me frustrations derived from other threads/topics/members. Either way, what we're discussing here (sharing opinions, like you said) is the contradiction of exploiting as issue (or overplaying an issue obsessively) and then blaming it on the system by saying it's badly designed. Nobody here is saying criticism = b.s.

I never even touched the subject of failed expectations, much less said that your imagination alone can overcome that. And, yes, you're right, if that's the case of a player, any player, it's his business alone. And if he wants to share it with others such as to offer criticism for improvements, all the better.

We weren't trying to silence anybody, on the contrary buddy.

I just think you took a wrong turn (in regards to this thread) and ran with it. No biggie, gg. Cheers my friend.

OP is the beacon of truth.

But how do they give you the freedom that marks TES games without relying on the player not to over do some things? Admittedly the iron daggers for smithing could have been better thought out, if only from the RP stand point as I am not sure why the ability to make a few hundred identical iron daggers would give you the skill to make armor from bits of dragon. But by and large for the game to work you need the freedom to actually make choices, and some of them will be bad.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

EDIT; But yes, of course, there's still things they really ought to tweak and balance out a little more, whether you play with self-imposed restrictions / restraint or not.

Good post, OP.

There's a lot in the game, but sadly on some of it the detail is shallow, as you said. I fully agree with you in respect of how some people play the game, then complain about how they played the game...it reminded me of a story a friend who is an electrician told me about how he had done a job while dosed up with flu tablets...he saw a bare live cable, he knew it was dangerous, but he still went ahead and grabbed it anyway. Some players simply can't help themselves...they see the exploit or easy option, they know that it will change the game, but they go ahead and do it, then complain that the developers failed because the exploit was there...it's a single player game, the only person the exploit or easy option affects is you.

On the point of the 'smithing exploit', churning out iron daggers...well, it was mentioned pre-release that you could do that as, quote, "...a day job", and that was backed up by numerous references to it (and other things) by various articles on the game...it's not as if it wasn't intended, it totally was...and as some of those higher armours etc require high smith skills, it may be necessary for some people who use them.

I just recently made my Hunter / Adventurer character, and I've upgraded all his leather armor and his hunting bow, and have found his a "poacher's axe" that goes well with his story, and that's it for me. I don't intend on getting any better weapons or armor for him. That's my personal challenge. People complain that Archery is OP, so I've taken it upon myself to add this sense of difficulty and story. I haven't completed any story quests and have been just going from town to town doing side quests. It's fun and really enjoyable.

I agree that people who complain about certain things being over powered, are at fault for exploiting them in the first place.

Wow, if you think the OP was "trying to silence other players" I really think you need to go back and read some of his comments. He was simply saying, what's the point of complaining about something that you are voluntarily doing? For example, ever since Oblivion came out there have been countless players who gripe about fast travel and go so far as to say it should never have been included or should have a toggle so you can disable it. Bottom line is, if you think fast travel ruins the role-play experience, you have the option to not use it. That was his point. Don't say "I have to use it because it is there" and then complain that it makes the game worse. There are no victims, only volunteers...

I don't see how attempts at cutting down exploits to limit the need to selfgimp is cutting down the freedom. And yes, you should need to make choices, both good and bad, but those choices should not be out-of-game avoidance of getting better by default -- the player should not be required or expected to "not over do" with a broken element, as the element should not be broken to begin with.

Seems like alot of people are overlooking that the ability to hinder craft exploits IS built in to the game. Everyone talks about how you can buy the mats to level the crafting skills but forget to mention it costs thousands of gold to do this. Just smithing, those hundreds of iron ingots and leather strips aren't free from the vendor not to mention alch and enchanting.

How do you make the gold to buy the mats? Killing and collecting. How do you slow this down? Dont start on Adept or easier, max out the craft, then complain it's easy. Start out on Expert or Master then you'll actually have to work for the "exploit". Just remember everyone that thinks the game is too easy/hard, you can change the difficulty at any time.

If this game were Final Fantasy XV instead, I would totally agree that it needed balancing. But the reason I play The Elder Scrolls series is because it offers something different from the rest. It allows me to truly create a character I want, even to the point of breaking the system if desired. I hope Bethesda doesn't listen too closely to those pleading for a completely balanced game from top to bottom - if they went that route, I'd be bored of the series.