They also serve as apt descriptions of many of the features of the game which can be garnered from prolonged exposure to them.

Maybe early game mechanic abuse would be a better term for it? I agree its not really an exploit in the traditional sense of the word, but also a major deal breaker in other areas.

I'm perfectly aware of it, but the way you said it made it sound as if the way you attained dragonbone armor was somehow more pure than some other method, when both in the end require 100 smithing skill. And like was said, anything over 567 armor is fluff, so "exploiting" dragonbone armor really would be a pretty ignorant thing to do. So I stand by my statement.

The opinions of someone lacking in experience are generally meaningless, since the gameplay of most RPGs changes as you level.

Now, if you had used the console and playtested the skills for at least a good chunk of those 30 hours, your opinions would have been taken more seriously by a lot more people. However, judging from what you wrote, that is clearly not the case.

^This

If this was an online RPG... especially an MMORPG... all your points would be extremely valid (ok, not all, but a fair number of them)

However... this is a SINGLE PLAYER ONLY game.

YOU tailor how you want your experience.

It doesn't matter if destruction is less powerful than 2hand + heavy armor. Why? You have a thing called difficulty slider that lets you tailor your games difficulty to your preferences and loadout.

The only things that could even warrant discussion are things that make Master difficulty way to easy or beginner difficult (lol wut? zero perks could play beginner )

If you want to loot farm and not make your own weapons that are better than anything you'll find (a valid argument) then just don't take Enchanting. (Using smithing to improve magical weapons you find I would consider valid... but then again.. the choice is YOURS!)

If you want to 1HK everything... then take the perks for it!

Make your own experience.

Mechanic abuse sounds more reasonable, but the fact is the designers put the mechanics in place knowing full well how they could be used. Why they did that but then let skills like destruction fall completely by the wayside is inexusable and is a valid criticism.

That is a copout argument. Playing a destruction playstyle should be just as valid and hold just as much potential as playing a melee character. "Just move the difficulty slider" is not a valid solution.

Now, I generally don't agree with the "If it's overpowered, just close your eyes and pretend it's not there" crowd, but really, no one is forcing you to powerlevel the skills that are clearly designed to be balanced at high levels only. You control the way your character advances; just don't take those abilities until you actually need them. Either that, or do take them, roll through the early levels of the game, and enjoy learning in the school of hard knocks when you reach a higher level.

In Morrowind I could stack Intelligence Potions to make better Intelligence Potions to make even better Intelligence Potions, then I could make Enchantments that would destroy entire caves or dungeons of enemies in one use. I could do the same thing in Oblivion. And, now I can do the same thing in Skyrim, only it is a bit harder and more involved. Being able to make uber armor/weapons/enchantments/potions is not new to Skyrim, it has been part of TES since the beginning. It also involves exploits and techniques that while part of the game, are not activities that one would do to play the game. These are activities that one would do to grind their character.

It has always been a choice to go down that road or not for the player. If you don't like the choices you make in this game, or the outcome of the choices you have made, then make different choices.

To the OP: Dual wielding is actually extremely powerful when you take all the perks.

That's not alchemy, potions in general are just broken.



Pretty much. Once you get dremora lord, conjuration is solid. When you get double dremora, you just wreck stuff.

You are such an idiot. The poster is just giving his opinion on a certain feature in the game. It doesn't mean he is "whining".

Not really, you can massively exploit the system with ease using the restoration glitch. You can create enchantments with as much fortify damage as you want, right at the start of the game. This restoration glitch needs to be sorted, its far beyond the normal using alchemy/enchanting to become better.

This is simply not true. You can only improve your weapons and armor so much in Skyrim before the algorithms cap out, and the gear that you create as a result is not anywhere near as relentlessly overpowered as the gear you can make in any previous TES game. In fact, one could argue that it's not overpowered at all, when using it at the level it (might have been) intended to be used at (although I will claim no insight as to the devs' chain of thought).

Use the dremora lord if you think conjuration is underpowered lol

...What? The Dremora Lord is incredibly powerful.

You have no idea if I'm an idiot, you just based that on a comment I made on a games forum, you trying to condescend me on this forum just doesn't work. My point was more about the ignorance of telling us what's wrong with the game after 30 hours of playing and barely any knowledge of half the skills, and some of the skills he did know he made very inaccurate observations (e.g. how weak dual wielding 1h is).

If one plays the game, this is true. Crafting skills level naturally. However, one can also grind on a few skills and make uber armor before the game requires it. If they chose to. The fact that the developers finally put a cap on this process is beside the point. The point I am making is these games have always allowed people to make an over powered uber character with uber equipment and it is not that difficult to do. If they chose to make an uber character. This is nothing new to this series.

I've played 5 or 6 builds up to level ~50 and at no point, with any of them, did I feel like there were obstacles I couldnt breeze through. Granted I play on whatever the default is, Adept maybe, but the point is that any of the builds, once you get use to the play style, are completely viable. Its a single player game without consequences for dieing, thats the only overpowered part....

Agreed. However, the relative overpowered-ness of a Skyrim character is nothing compared to the overpowered-ness of previous TES characters, and will be out leveled in time. Really, making your character super-powerful during mid-levels can be equated to putting on training wheels, and ones that will be forcefully removed once you play the game long enough (all this assuming that you actually play long enough to get to exceptionally high levels, of course).

EDIT: Although, come to think of it, there IS the Alchemy/Restoration bug. I honestly hope that they patch that out. If you're going to cheat, just go ahead and use the console.

I agree I leveled my smithing with all self mined ore and such. It leveled as I progressed in game and I actually made good money selling my wares over time. I also in turn enchanted said items as I made them. Leveled both I wouldn't say quickly, but it was definitely smooth. When I needed the powerful armors and weapons I had the means of getting them as needed.

That's why I think I'm going to call it abuse, since its pretty much the persons choice. So in terms of how I made my character I didn't abuse the system to make a bad ass dual wielder. Which in terms of this thread and OPs statement that DW is lacking.

Heavy armor better than Light armor? I disagree. For a stealth character, LA is better. True, with muffle/ perk that makes you silent, you miss out on the sneaking advantage, but it helps beforehand. As far as protection, Im usualy not seen, and when I am, my armor is good enough.

But, the best part is the 50% stamina refill rate perk. Thats one of the best perks in the game.

I know how you feel, Bethesda can be such a btch at times. I want to play how I want to play without starting over often.

Stopped reading after illusion. You clearly haven't played enough. 30 hours? Pfft. And illusion is arguably the most powerful magic skill. I can cast frenzy or pacify on anything if I dual cast. Then I just mop up.

Illusion isn't my fav. skill, but one of the best.

Just another reason why you don't put too much weight behind the opinions of new players.