After finishing the main quest I decided to video my exploits playing as a thief, and feel that the class is totally broken.

Completely overpowered at ~lvl25 with no effort, no attempt at crafting or to use the whole variety of my skills, no fun.

I've included a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKSjZ4s0klM that succinctly describes how I feel toward the class/game - not sure if I'm playing it through again but suffice it to say I was less than impressed with how quickly the game broke, and how little it offered at the highest difficulty.


Please look at my suggestions at the end of the video and I would welcome anyone who has anything to say about it, as the class I thought would be fun has totally ruined the experience for me.

raz

They are meant to kill people before they get a chance to fight back. How is it overpowered? I don't sneak up to someones back and stab them just for them to turn around with 80% of their health left.

Sneak + Conjuration + illusion = player character who can kill anything without ever being hit and without needing ot attack anything directly.

Sneak is very overpowered in this game, to the extent that I was running around with the steel dagger i started with even though I was level 20.

Are you playing on the Master difficulty? If you think you're thief is overpowered wait for your first random dragon encounter on Master difficulty survive that and tell me playing a thief is overpowered. I nearly crapped my pants. I had to run to the nearest village to get the aid of the village guard.

Did you perhaps not notice that he has plenty of spells to aid him in those specific encounters?

Where does the invisibility come from?

Yep seems a bit on the easy side

By the way, what daggers are those and where do you find them?

Overpowered Yes, but everything you do to become that overpowered is optional. Don't take the x15 times dagger damage perk, problem solved. Police yourself until Beth/Modders fix it.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

How is that difficult to understand?

Traditional rogue/thief characters are glass cannons, emphasizing maximum damage output in as few strikes, because normally, a thief is not capable of just going toe-to-toe with enemies. I know that if I don't take out certain enemies, I better have a handy escape plan or else I'm dead and I have to reload.

It's like saying a Warrior/Knight type of character is overpowered because he can just strap on heavy armor and kill everything with a big sword while getting beat around and hardly taking much damage.

If you play according to the strengths of your given style, and do it well, you are going to be powerful, that's kind of the point. If you don't want to be powerful, be a mage who doesn't use magic at all, wears robes, and uses a dagger.

The video claims to use an unmodified game, but he has two blades of woe? See 1:20.

Oh and it might be "broken" when your sneak gets high enough but at the start you can't sneak for [censored] and openly meleing with your dagger seriously svcks. So I guess at 25+ you're reaping the rewards of your hard labour =)

What if you want that perk, but you just want it to be harder to actually get a sneak attack in? He's just completely invisible through that entire video, so if someone can tell me how to avoid that I'll enjoy using sneak properly. I won't get those gloves either.

I agree with this. What you pointed out is the whole point of the class.
Personally, I am having a blast as a thief/archer. I feel a sense of accomplishment whenever I successfully get that stealth-kill off.
Also, not every enemy dies in one hit, even with the perks, and even with daggers. I still find myself in sticky situations whenever something tough gets within melee distance. Afaik, to sneak successfully, the ideal thing to do is grab light armor which does not provide much protection from that 2-hander swinging down at your face.

Sometimes he literally does use invisibility, so not using spells is one way to avoid making it too easy.

Exactly.

The different play styles are balanced so that people who want to play a certain way can have fun and be successful doing so.

People want to play as a sniper, not just a guy who runs around backwards shooting arrows, balance be damned.

I am fascinated that someone is complaining that a game is too easy.

If the game were far too difficult there would be a multitude of threads about game toughness and even less players.

If the game is too easy try playing a pure mage. I hear those guys get their butts handed to them

besides, would you even play a game that was too hard to play?

I don't think you remember a time when games like blackthorne for the SNES were so freaking difficult they weren't even fun. or if you want a huge challenge, play fallout 1 or fallout tactics

i think the ability to sneak behind enemies backs is totally awesome and I bet a few people on here would agree

The game is broken in the reverse way if you don't take that perk. As a thief/assassin in Skyrim you NEED the ability to one-shot in melee range while stealthed - you're a glass cannon and unless you're high level and have abused the heck out of mechanics you can't hold your own well in a up close face to face fight against anything at or above your level. You have to use lots of poison and potions to win those fights if you play a proper thief who eschews magic of any kind. My assassin uses no magic, doesn't enchant, doesn't smith, and can't one shot most boss monsters on adept, let alone master difficulty.

The only problem I have is that it's a bit too easy to hide. I'm thinking about resetting my perks to not take the entire left hand side of the sneak tree and avoid the muffle enchant, thereby (hopefully) making it much harder to sneak up into melee range.

hahaha
ohmigod man

i didn't even notice that. good eyes friend

Battletoads.

Don't you mean the left side?

To everyone defending the class, you should probably make sure you watch the video... it really does look ridiculous. The reason sneak attacks are supposed to be OP is because they're hard to perform, but that's clearly not the case if you go the route this guy did. I've got no problem with 15x damage if it was actually a struggle sneaking up on the enemy in the first place.

So right now I'm planning on ignoring the left side of the sneak tree and not using invisibility potions at all. Is it alright to put 5/5 on the Stealth perk though? 40% harder to detect shouldn't be too OP, right?

Oh, and I freakin' love Blackthorne!

You can do this with a cheap exploit. No console codes or mods required.

This.

My warrior-like character blocks giants strikes like they're hitting me with feathers. On master.

Games not broken, player is...

May as well use the console if you use the exploit, whats the difference? And while I agree sneaking can be a little overpowered sometimes, min/maxing with illusion and muffle on top of the exploit and then complaining about being overpowered seems silly.