I wasn't aware that roleplaying games were forbidden from having proper balance and relevant difficulty. Oh wait, that's right...this is an Elder Scrolls game! A game, with a fanbase teeming with drones and apologists that cannot accept any failings, and allow issues and balance failures to magically migrate and mutate from one game to the next without even the slightest complaint. I mean, god forbid Bethesda actually gets better at dealing with the classical shortcomings of their own games that they've been making for how long?
Try to calm down. If my opening post doesn't make it clear I am neither a drone nor apologist, I don't know what does. I am willing to forgive some things in exchange for the positives when looking at the larger picture sure, but that isn't the same thing, and I'm no stranger to criticising TES. In fact, I was one of the most vocal in opposition to the stringent level scaling Oblivion used.
Strangely enough the points are actually slightly related. When you overcompensate to balance things, the game world itself suffers, and becomes more stale and repetitive. If maxed out Destruction with every possible multipliers, equalled maxed out Combat with every possible multiplier, then really.. all you have is different animations for killing things.
Now this isn't true for all the perceived inbalances, but for some, but its these very inbalances that ensure players have to find different methods of playing which complement the style of the player. A destruction mage may not be as powerful solo, but as a magician he has other tricks up his sleeve when things get tricky, magic is not the same as combat, it involves a bit of thought, the correct spell at the correct time, and this doesn't mean always using destruction. These things affect the personality of the character.
Please, Elder Scrolls isn't even a real sandbox, no matter how many times you people like to repeat that it is, as though it would suddenly render any complaints invalid. A true sandbox is something like gmod or minecraft, where you basically really can "do whatever you want" because you build everything, and the game itself gives you no purpose outside of what you decide.
Arguments by taking a definitions to its extreme you must realise thats a weak way to argue a point. Nobody said it was a pure sandbox. Merely it provides the lore, world, people, and an overarching storyline in which to build a character. What you do with it is up to you, you could say the sandbox is as much mental, as it is visual from what you see in the game.
The sandbox is in how you wish to be challenged, and its clearly lack of imagination, and inability to suspend disbelief so essential for storytelling.
Not only to demand the game shows you where to go and what to do, now you want it to tell you what the challenge is.