I like the way smithing and enchanting work together. It took my first character until level 53 to max smithing and enchanting is about 85 I think. My character is hardly over-powered. Powerful, yes, as she should be, but I'm da - darn - careful to stay out of melee range with more than one Deathlord. My bow is extremely powerful, but certainly not one-shotting dragons or Giants (giants take 2 ).

With good knowledge of the game locations,items, and quests even master difficulty with PISE installed and practically zero use of trade skills ( smithing , enchanting , alchemy) the game can still be made relatively easy.
The game is too easy because it doesn't use oblivion's scaling system which quiet literally punishes you for unoptimized leveling. Add in the ridiculous power of the trade skills and you can break the game as soon as you have enough gold to buy a few hundred crafting materials.

Monster level scaling in skyrim is an absolute mess. Too often you will meet hordes of level 1 draugr even though youre well past the point where they would be a challenge or even nuisance. The reverse side is meeting draugr overlords when you're far too low. While i realize most people consider skyrim a "skilless" game i would argue there are some aspects, mostly game knowledge that can set causal players from seasoned players. While it is impossible to balance for both, master difficulty should present a challenge to the latter group. There needs to be a 5th difficulty mode called "masochist" mode that would only be playable if the player made the most out of their crafting skills, min-maxed the hell out of their stats, and planned every perk from level 1 to 50, and got real comfortable hitting that quickload button.
Outside of difficulty issues there is a massive imbalance between weapon damage and spell damage. As someone who has always loved playing the mage class in rpgs i was incredibly disheartened to see that a dull knife tends to do as much damage in the long run as a high powered spell. spells requires a massive investment in either enchantment slots or magicka stat which takes away from health. Weapon damage requires no perks in the weapon tree or any enchantments to reach ridiculous levels. There is absolutely no reason to cast destruction spells in skyrim outside of the flavor/rpg aspect because weapons can do the job better and without cost.

crafting skills do not ruin the game- you can still breeze through without them and you certainly have a choice in using them. some one else said it best, skyrim is balanced around first times players fumbling around and spending most of their perks in the speech or pickpocket tree. 14 hours in, level 19, master difficulty with PISE, almost zero trade skills and im already finding myself bored at the difficulty.

blah blah blah sweeping generalization... blah blah blah it should be fixed... blah blah blah it needs to be this way...

I really don't understand the kind of complaints in these threads. I have 100 Smithing and have exploited the game like crazy, and have really enjoyed doing so. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't. It allows me to optimize my character to exactly the specifications I want; for instance, I can take advantage of the restoration exploit to precicely balance my enchantments. Now, it is possible for me to create weapons that do hundreds if not thousands of damage, but I've capped my weapons around 70 because I've found that then they are perfectly balanced to allow for both challenge and roleplay in my game. I can also add 100% disease resistance to my armor so I that I can wear my Amulet of Talos; without the exploits I couldn't do that.

If you want a particular kind of challenge, create it. Skyrim is designed perfectly for doing so. Deciding not to do something that game mechanics allow is no less immersing than going into a menu and changing the difficulty of the "world" around you.

Works both ways, Yesterday I died twice, first an ancient dragon landed on top of me and chewed me up, yes that is fair, a boss monster and had i kept distance I would have killed it.
Second was a bandit in fur armor and an orcish bow who shot me once and killed me, yes it was probably a critical but still, nothing could kill you in one hit in Oblivion past low level except then you used stacked weakness on something with reflect.

Sorry I dont get the point of your post. Not being a git, I really mean I dont understand what point your making.

I totally agree with this. I am on the Xbox 360 and level 48. I maxed smithing out at about level 36 but still have not bought Dwarven, Orcish, Ebony or Daedric Smithing. Once I got to dragon I was happy so I could make armor and sell it. I started out thinking I was going to make weapons and enchant them but it seemed that no matter what I disenchanted, I couldnt get magic items back up to the level that I originally got them at. A necklace that was 60% - I dont think i could ever make it again - so I stopped enchanting and purchased / acquired items instead of enchanting. Alchemy takes alot of work to make what you need and if a player was to do the collecting / learning / creating for that - I say all the power too them. I do think the advancement for blacksmithing might be a little too quick OR it might be the fact you can churn the same items and keep going up. It might be nice to cap off advancement with a specific item - so you can advance a level by making leather Bracers - but after that one level - you cant do it again with leather bracers again. You would have to make leather helmets for example - eventually you cant advance until you put a point into something else like steel or something.

I simply use the crafting skills as a way to earn money other than COLLECTING it in the game. Its not like I can gamble at a bar or anything to try to make money - which might be nice. I also like that I can mine gold/silver - turn into ingots and then use the gems I have found to make jewelry that I can sell. I also UPGRADE armor/weapons I get before selling them - which is also nice. Its too bad I cant open my own blacksmith shop though. I pretty much do that anyway in Whiterun - using the barrels there as my storehouse for ingots until I need them.

I also dont like the fact, I cant make any dragon weapons. I really dont get why...

I do have to say that I dont understand the ordering of some of the perks in skills either - some seem like pre-reqs - which I get
But I dont understand why you would buy BRIBERY first and then get PERSUASION in speech. I want PERSUASION but not BRIBERY...so I'm blocked as a GOOD character.

I have to admit that I too do not see the problem. then again at 20th level my character has a perk in at most if not all skill trees.

the best weapon that I have at 74 points in smithing is my skyforge war axe at 32 points of damage.

the game can be as challenging as you make it.

I just don't smith things to insane levels, all works for me fine. It helps I don't use smithing, armour or wep perks (bar the arcane smithing perk). I do love alchemy though, so I have invested perks to make some grotesque poisons, which nicely make up for the difficulty some enemies give me.

I enjoy the crafting.

I think crafting was a good addition, but I do wish either it, or the rest of the game was better balanced around it. Generally, I greatly dislike it when one component of a game, marginalizes or renders another component entirely irrelevant. In the case of smithing and enchanting, it ruins any real reason to do quests or explore any of the hundreds of handcrafted dungeons because you outright know, that nothing you find will ever be better than what you yourself can make.

That of course, isn't taking into account the other exploits or oversights with the system.

If you do a lot of damage you can play on higher difficulty where the enemy does 1.5 or 2 times as much damage, you do less damage but this is offset by your high damage weapons.

This makes the game much more intense as many enemies can kill you fast.
One weakness in Oblivion was enemies who had loads of health, you would also have lots of health if you raised endurance early, however neither of you did much damage making fights drawn out affairs.

Yep, its a nice way to improve your weaponry, and being able to apply your own enchants to customise your weapons is fine as it is. A small minority of people will find some way to break any system, ignoring them is the easiest fix.

One of my friends is able to "one-shot" a dragon with his bow - insta kill.

Echant to boost alchemy,
Alchemy to boots enchant
enchant to boost smithing
alchemy to boost enchanting
enchant to boost crafting

then throw on some poison or sum shizz and bingo your a freaken G.O.D.

I am not sure I like the exact design of the system but it seems to appeal to a lot of people so I doubt that there will be nerfs per-se but we will see "bugs" fixed [assuming the Restoro loop is a "bug"]

I find that using 2/3 of the crafting skills [like Smithing and Alchemy] don't cause too many problems.

Basically I find that with TES games it's important to come up with a character whose future skills should work reasonably well with the game systems in place. When you do this you'll probably find the game more enjoyable.

Source?

Bethesda has never, ever nerfed or fixed anything except bugs, and game breaking bugs at that.

They might boost destruction to be on par with melee(with crafting) though in the DLC. That's as far as it will probably go.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1300562-skyrim-what-were-working-on/

its right in here stating they are working on rebalancing issues

Fair enough. Although re-balancing can also mean anything from tweaking enemy scaling to improve what's bad.

Like I said, Bethesda has never, ever nerfed anything unless it is an explicit bug. So going on past history it is very unlikely crafting will be nerfed (the whole restoration potion affect fortify alchemy might since that's a bug that can crash games). And given it is a single player game I doudt they would.

But it wouldn't surprise me if destruction for example is buffed in DLC though. Either through more powerful spells or things like weakness to magic/weakness to element spells.

the system is fine, enchanting and smithing is fun...its hardly broken, just cause someone else utilizies everything to full extent and can do a lot of damage doesn't mean the game needs to be "fixed", in FO3 you had a mini nukes and an alien blaster, thats fun..i believe in freedom to play the game how you want...not everyone wants the game super duper hard to play, not everyone plays on max difficulty where your weapons don't do much damage...there are people that want to be able to more casually play the game and be able to mow thru enemies...its up to each player, i like to have some aspects of my character overpowered, for when i need it, and i have some weaknesses to, so the option is there to build your avatar how you want. so threads about how everything is overpwered are kinda dumb, what do they think bethesda is gonna do? totally nerf enchanting and smithing? ROFL that won't be happening...they can nerf their own game...they aren't gonna force me to play their way.

I'm sure they're referring to unintended exploits like training from a follower then taking all the money back... Raising the sneak skill from walking up against a wall in a friendly town or attacking essential characters to raise you weapon / magic skill and vial juggling etc etc

well they rebalanced FO3 too but nothing got nerfed, some things get a boost, rebalancing is different than nerfing, bethesda always makes their games with the ability to become overpowered if you want, or certain elements of your game, that won't be changing, thats one of the trademarks of their games, FO3 had an alien blaster and mini nukes, plus loads of perks/equipment etc. to make your avatar super powerful, its the same thing in skyrim and its gonna be the same thing in FO4 and thats one reason why all their games are so fun and popular and are always rated at like 9 or 10...bethesda has the winning formula for gamemaking, its fun to be overpowered at times, but its your choice to make yourself that overpowered, you have to utilize certian things to become overpowered, or you can use stock weapons and run around naked if you want.

Look, it’s REAL simple. If you think something makes you too powerful DON”T use it! If your new uber enchanted Daedric Armor provides more protection than you want it to, use something else. If your new Godsword kills too easily, use something that doesn’t! To make the conscious choice to practice a skill like smithing or enchanting, then complain it’s too powerful is just idiotic in my opinion. Why must you have the devs impose limits on you that you can easily impose on yourself?

Hey, don’t get me wrong, I like better gear as much as the next guy or gal. But I fail to see how something YOU have complete control over is “overpowered”. I’ve logged probably close to 200 hours (maybe a little more) in 3 very different characters, and have yet to ruin my game. Why? Because I do everything naturally and in keeping with my RP of that character. If I’ve been adventuring and have some Smithing resources I can use, I go make what I can, improve it as best as I can and usually sell it. I’ll use a few crappy soul gems to enchant some gear I’m going to sell just for a little more coin, and continue on my adventures. If along the way I kill and loot a better bow from an enemy that I have I’ll take it, improve it use it. Notice I never said I mined or bought all the ore I could find and spammed Iron Daggers to increase my skill. Once I can improve enchanted items in Smithing, and get some decent elemental and skill enchantments on my gear my advancement in these skills slows to a crawl. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten either to 100 yet.

Don't like how it makes the game too easy? Don't use it.

My characters tend to make godly weapons, but then I don't mind if most fights get trivialized. I play Dead-is-Dead, so I cannot afford to get into drawn-out hack-fests that give the opponent time to land massive critical hits; as such, I build for short fights, and incredibly strong weapons suit that well.

Then again, I'm not in it for the combat but for the exploration, and ending fights quickly means more time to explore. Yeah, the loot I get tends to be junk next to my hand-made stuff, but I collect and sell it anyway; once the CK comes out I'll have a use for all the cash I've been amassing, so the fact that for the time being I have more money than Croesus doesn't bother me.

I'm all for crafting.

Like any potential smurfing power in any RPG, it can easily unbalance the game. That's not the games fault.

I use crafting but I don't spend hours banging out Dwarven daggers just to level it up either.


With all great power comes great responsibility

Of course I never use trainers for skill training ( just books ) so I earn those levels the hard way.
Even then the stuff I can make is still better then what I find ( weapon , armor wise )

I'm fine with crafting the way it is.