But that assumes the only reason to explore anything is to get better loot. I explore them because they're fun, interesting and some are absolutely amazing from a level design standpoint. "Why climb Mount Everest? Because it's THERE!"

Not much they can do about the sneak thing thats been around since Oblivion, its just how sneak works. The training and taking money back needs to be fixed as thats a serious over looked exploit. Attacking essential characters to raise combat skills is a easy fix make it so essential NPCs dont give exp. I assume by vial juggling you are reffering to the telekenisis spell? not much can be done about that its just how the spell works.

Yes, but that assumes everyone is of that mindset. Fact is, that this is an rpg with much of its content being in the form of dungeons. Traditionally, you clear a dungeon for better loot, not to admire how pretty it is. Logically, after clearing the terrible creatures inside, you would expect to be adequately rewarded for your efforts right? Some form of ancient treasure, or lost artifact? That's not to say they aren't pretty, or sometimes fun, but in no way does that excuse poorly thought out design.

Lol, sorry but i really hate post like this. This person thinks crafting needs to be patched down because they can't control themselves from making overpowered gear and ruining their own game. I chose to stick with smithing only and not use enchanted weapons or lvl enchanting. I stick with gear that i can improve or make. At lvl 43 i still can get my butt kicked if i'm not cafeful. Sorry but you decided to do this. Its not a bug in the game. For a singleplayer game , the crafting is amazing and fun to use. Bethesda doesn't need to fix it for people that abuse it.

I'd prefer to keep my crafting skills the way they are, thanks. Options are good. A big part of what I love about TES is the *choice* to be either an uber powerful juggernaut, or a frail character who has to carefully evaluate every possible engagement.

The fact that a system exists within the game, which leads to great power if used a certain way, does not equate to a commandment to do so.

Fortify Resto ought to be fixed, as that's pretty clearly a glitch... the rest is fine as is, IMO.

Actualy in Oblivion you could have max armor wearing cloth if you put shield enchants on it. The bonus to this was you never had to repair any of it.

You could remove the foritfy alchemy, smithing, and echanting buffs, than limit weapons and armor to your level range.
--- This just makes it so you don't have to have any self control.

Or you can practice self control and not come to the boards to complain
--- Unless you want to one shot everything, to each their own.

Don't forget, daedric weapons and armor are a base of level 50-60ish gear. When you super smith it up you just cranked it to level 100 gear in a game that only levels to around 50. You than add on enchantments that boosts it level 200 or 300 gear with enchanting....

Now when you do this at level 20-30... don't wonder why the game just got super easy.....

this just doesn't need fixing...bethesda doesn't nerf their games and they're all about player freedom, especially in the context of maxing a character out, FO3 had the alien blaster, the A321 plasma rifle, mini nukes, chinese stealth armor, dart gun, gatling laser, those are all devastating weapons and they're fun to use, so the point being if you think its too overpowered don't use it...but don't expect bethesda to nerf the game, thats like saying the alien blaster or A3-21 plasma rifle, bottlecap mines or nuka grenades should of been taken out. so if you want the game nerfed, you'll have to do it yourself, bethesda is very good about not making games too frustrating or too much of a grind to play and quite frankly when you want more challenge, its pretty easy to just not use smithing or enchanting and/or good armor or good weapons etc...but for them to take all that out and ruin it for all the rest of the people who like it...lol

The one great thing about Beth's games is that they are so NOT-LIMITING. As freedom-of-choice games go, Beth has a lock on them.... Now, for folks who have an entitlement-syndrome sort of thing going, they not only support the habit, they actually enable it. But don't come here to complain about it....

That's not really accurate. As far as abusing exploits go, sure. They're obviously quite apathetic and lazy about that, along with balancing their own game since they know they have a fleet of modders to do it for them. Now when it comes to making meaningful choices with quests? Nope, you have mostly one way to do it. Do it, or not at all.

Well.... this thread was about "abusing" the crafting, not about questing.... I haven't had too many issues with quests though, personally. I just know now where all the "gotchas" are, and dodge them. But that's not germane to this thread.

Exactly, balance hardly matters in a single player game so long as the build people like to play are viable. Much rather Beth fix all the various bugs in the game.

Nope, crafting is not killing the game. If you take enough time to craft and smith and enchant your weapons and armor to their highest levels, you have earned it. Nothing wrong with that. If you want the game more difficult... master difficulty, don't use shouts, and leave followers behind.

Bethesda shipped my game on a plastic disk without telling me that plastic was fragile. I took it outside, and dropped a rock on it, and it shattered into glitter on driveway. I kind of feel like Bethesda is responsible, and should fix the game, because it's totally unplayable now. They should put some kind of warning, like "fragile, you could break this if you do stupid stuff to it".

The best thing about single player games, is you only have one idiot that can mess it up for you.

I imagine some people feel it ruins the game for them, but, they are the same people who won't put down that super sword and godly armor either so....

I think it is the MMO attitude where you have to grind to get the best possible skill combination and equipment to complete. When you do that in Skyrim you end up being basiclly a god, not just average joe on the corne waiting for a raid invite.

I maximized trade skills during my first play through after progressing very far into the game.
This time around im not using any of them except for 3 perks in enchanter so yes its certainly a choice.

Regardless, I would certainly like a 5th difficulty setting called masochist(or a mod) where enemies would be a challenge even with maximized items.

I think the whole "lets become as powerful as this TES system will let me" was around MUCH before MMOs & such. Things like training skills have been around for a really long time in this series so that's not really the source of the problem or the real problem.

IMHO Beth doesn't consider the ability to "break" the game as a problem. I suspect they consider it a holy-grail type of feature so they practically build-in a way to become a virtual god in every game as opposed to making more reasonable gameplay & design decisions. If you want to really enjoy the game Beth assumes you'll create a character / preplan skills / perks / etc. to give you the level of challenge that you want based off of the difficulty setting you choose.

A toggle that looks at your armor value, weapon damage, HPs, spell costs, etc. would be cool varibles to feed in to the leveling formulas that Beth has for its critters. You could probably still break the game but it would be cool if those other things were taken into consideration.

That is probably what it is most like... if you feel that the game is not challenging, or that it is broken, put down your super sword and god armor, go back to basics, and feel like an average joe. Complain about that and revert back to your previous equipment.

The thing that makes it seem worse than it is though, is the enemy scaling stopping at around level 50. If enemies scaled up further, then we might have a reason to need that uber gear in the first place.

No, you broke your game by choosing to play it a certain way.

Not broken if it still works well, it's not broken if what you put labor into is good and is powerful.

It's not so much that trade skills are broken, its that skyrim is pitifully easy even on master mode even without trade skills. The holy grail of strength should have some sort of counterpart for challenge instead of the player having to impose artificial restrictions on perfectly legitimate skills.

Players should not have to be forced to make arbitrary rules of their own just to stop the game from becoming a farce. Thats a failure of game design and implementation, especially in an RPG game where there is a "ruleset" that is supposed to do the work for the player in that respect. The fact of the matter is that the crafting skills are OTT in the bonuses they give out. It makes traders useless other than as a latter day ATM and renders any loot found pointless.

OP poster; crafting ruining the game? Not likely. turn the difficulty up.

As you level you'll probably need the power you've found.