^^ That is probably the most annoying post I've ever tried to read. DieBySword, would you mind doctoring that up so that your own words aren't in CODE brackets? That way I won't have to use a scrollbar to read everything you wrote.

@ DieBySword (not quoting all that haha)
The issue is that reducing cost does not in any way improve your actual damage output, just the lengh of time you can keep it up.

What I mean by this is that it gets to a point where it takes me so long to kill a single mob that, sure, i can cast as many spells as i want, but the gameplay itself is broken.

Also, we are talking about the same robes haha

All Beth has to do is get the basics put in place, we make the balance because it would be WRONG in an RPG to force balance on us.

Crafting is out of control: If i want to make a warrior and still have a challenge, I can't use all three crafting professions (and even 2 is iffy). The synergies between them are so powerfull that they make the very idea of min/maxing as a type of gameplay completely absurd. You cannot take the best character developpement decisions, the ones you know you need to be the best at what you are doing, without turning the game into Hello-Kittie-Adventure as far as difficulty goes.

Destruction is a flippin' joke: The tree does not scale! That means that, unlike every single other combat ability in the game, there is a point after which you will -never- hit harder, while everything keeps scaling up. What that means is that we have a situation where a destruction mage, at a certain level, will actually do more damage with -unperked- bows then with -fully perked- destruction spells. Now it wouldn't be a that big a deal if that level was very late, but that level is 35. On a game with 81 levels in total, you will always hit as hard as a level 35 mage.

What that means is that mages are forced to turn themselves into summoners by taking up conjuration, effectively completely changing the gameplay and restricting their possible options. And guess what: Even that doesn't scale!

Illusion trivalizes the game: Here is a skill I am quite happy to see finally shine... except they overdid it! It trivializes all form of content, same as crafting synergies. The problem is that there is no element of damage nor resistance involved. What that means is that once you have the master spells and the appropriate perks, you can just invis in, frenzy, invis out and grab a popcorn. Then just calm + shoot the last man standing. Nothing can resist it, nothing can counter it, nothing can mitigate it. With destruction spells you need to kite, with arrows you sneak, with weapons you need to stagger them first if they have a shield or are blocking, etc. Illusion is an "IWIN" button; the only strat is "press it".

There is no incentive to ever wear robes: Even as a mage, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear more then a single piece of robes, because you gain absolutely nothing from wearing them over a light armor piece with the same enchant. If I have a cloth glove with -20% cost to Destruction spells, and a light armor with -20% cost to Destruction spells, then there will never be a question that the Light armor piece will be superior. Sure there is the Alteration perk, but again, the mage issue: it stops scaling really fast, and then falls behind. Hell, all the masks (best mage helmets) in the game are Light Armor!

As it stands the only Cloth piece worth wearing over anything else is the Robes from the College quest line, because you cannot reproduce its stats through other means.

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I keep reading on this forum about how the game is supposed to be about Choice...

Then why is it that every time someone brings up any of these points they are told to just not use them? So far, if I had listened to these boards, I would say that I cannot use: Enchanting, Smithing, Alchemy, Illusion, Destruction, Sneak and Dual Wield. Those are just the ones that I have personally read here.

Doesn't that actually restrict my choices considerably?!?

Yes, you should be able to become God if you want to, but you should also be able to have a good level of challenge as well if you want to. You should not have to restrict your own options to keep the game interesting, if anything, that is sort of killing it for me (as in, my opinion, I know its not everyone's).

Isnt there already a difficulty bar setting?!?

What is the point of there being a difficulty setting if the acutal in-game difficulty is dictated by wether you chose the OP or the UP build? You want the game to be very easy? Shouldn't you obtain that by putting the setting on "very easy" ("Novice")? You want the game to be very hard? Shouldn't you obtain that by putting the setting on "very hard" ("Master")?

TD;LR: Why do I have to balance the game for the devs? Why do I have to chose how to build my character in function of how hard I want the game to be instead of how I want to play?

Yes, there will be mods. Tons and tons of mods. I play on Xbox. I will never get to use a single one of them, yet I paid the same price for my game.

P.S. sorry for the typing/grammar/spelling mistakes, english is not my first language.

EDIT:

Right. That's why I said Beth should make Mages OP and gimp Warriors and Thieves. Fans should then mod it to their liking.

Quit worrying about what everyone else is doing, and worry about your own game.

This is not the point. The point is that when there are so many easy ways to exploit the game, the fun of discovering new ways to improve your character goes away quickly. And for some of us, improving our toons is one of the most important things in an RPG. While you can have fun exploring the world and discovering new towns, we have fun building particular strongest strategies to defeat the enemies. We can't discuss this because it comes down to play style. But the fact is that having imbalances issues and so many known ways to exploit the system is almost like spoiling the whole main quests to a player who enjoy exploration. The game simply becomes less charming.

Complain because you can make godlike weapons.....

Complain if they changed it so that with 100% smithing and enchantment skills the weapon would be 10% as powerfull as any magical weapons found ingame.

Ever heard of self restraint?

Heres a hint....if you don't like overpowered weapons.....DON'T MAKE THEM!!!!!

I love how some people demand wet nursing.

Has Bethesda ever even done a balance patch?

Complain because you can make godlike weapons.....

Complain if they changed it so that with 100% smithing and enchantment skills the weapon would be 10% as powerfull as any magical weapons found ingame.

Ever heard of self restraint?

Heres a hint....if you don't like overpowered weapons.....DON'T MAKE THEM!!!!!

I love how some people demand wet nursing.

mmm let me ask you this....

You've made a better case than a lot of posters have (I'm an explorer so that really brought it home for me) but I still feel like I'm missing something. It just feels like you want to be as powerful as possible, but not too powerful. What mechanism would make this happen? Isnt't this point going to vary person to person?

Not to be "that guy" but you didn't actually ask them anything!

Complain because you can make godlike weapons.....

Complain if they changed it so that with 100% smithing and enchantment skills the weapon would be 10% as powerfull as any magical weapons found ingame.

Ever heard of self restraint?

Heres a hint....if you don't like overpowered weapons.....DON'T MAKE THEM!!!!!

I love how some people demand wet nursing.

I enjoy struggling with many alternatives to make a powerful character, till I find out one that pleases me the most (not necessarily overpowered). The main issue in Skyrim is that you don't have many alternatives in that aspect, there are a few that clearly are overpowered, such as abusing crafting, and others that are clearly useless to even try, such as a destruction mage. The OP stated those balancing issues in his thread, and I'm just agreeing with him. Don't get me wrong, I also enjoy doing quests and discovering places, but character development is the main aspect in my view.

Of course each person will have a different point of view. And that's exactly why I agree with the OP that the game is amazing, but can be improved in some aspects to please players like us. If, for example, you're an explorer but still feel something is missing in that aspect, go ahead and create a thread to say what could be improved regarding exploration. Even if I don't care too much with exploration, I would completely support your thread.

So I'm not at a level where the game is "broken" yet, just about level 10, haven't powered any skills and my highest is 31; I am still using weapons/armour I found. Playing on master difficulty, I remember coming out of my first fight with wolves on the way to Riverwood and thinking "phew" after finishing with a slim amount of health. I picked up Sven in town and have now been through the barrows all the way down to the bottom and had zero trouble with anything in there. Kinda feels like he also "broke the game" for me, and it would've been a hard slog solo.

Having read about and seen in action just how easy it is to trivialise the game on the hardest difficulty has me very worried, because my nature is to min/max! It's what I enjoy doing, might not necessarily min/max for best combat, but I like to make my characters as strong as possible while making sure they're not blocked from doing anything. I don't get huge amounts of time to play so I'm currently aiming for a fighter type; heavy in 2h, light armour, with decent amounts in all crafting skills, with elements of magic to give more survivability, and enough pickpocket/lockpicking/speech to feel like I won't be denied some item that has to be stolen from a behind the ear of a guy locked behind an impenetrable door whose location must be obtained from the most tight-lipped of monks. No, I don't care if that item is a lockpick, I want access to it.

I want my character to have the best it can possibly have, I want to do all the damage I possibly can every time I hack away at the big angry thing getting in my face, and take as little damage from it as possible. Yet now, I find out that doing that is going to make the game an overly repetitive, very well dressed up whack-a-mole sim? That's kind of disheartening. And don't even get me started on the thief-type character I wanted to make. I'm off to re-roll a mage, since it sounds like they're the only ones who can naturally optimize themselves and still have a challenge, even if it is because Beth forgot to have destruction damage scale with skill.

[.

Destruction is a flippin' joke: The tree does not scale! That means that, unlike every single other combat ability in the game, there is a point after which you will -never- hit harder, while everything keeps scaling up. What that means is that we have a situation where a destruction mage, at a certain level, will actually do more damage with -unperked- bows then with -fully perked- destruction spells. Now it wouldn't be a that big a deal if that level was very late, but that level is 35. On a game with 81 levels in total, you will always hit as hard as a level 35 mage.

Are you serious? At lvl 38 my destruction magic is just fine. Have you quested for your master level spells?

You know I think a good solution for future installments of the game assuming ofc that they decide to stick to enemy level scaling is to have the game anolyze what skills you are leveling and putting perks into, and after anolyzing that give proper response to it in a form of a counter (preferably this would be done softly on normal and harsher and harsher as the difficulty is raised)
Say you level smithing because you're role-playing as a artisan who crossed the border, now some may call it power leveling but say the player raises the skill to 40-50 right off the bat, the game takes this into account and raises the armor value of the NPCs that wear armor and the ones that don't have more health.
Now say that someone focuses on destruction, the game takes this into account and raises the default elemental resistance to slightly higher levels.

Now this would be hard to balance out and make correct but I think it's the best solution in my opinion .