I have a hard time understanding the thing with empowerment (or what you call it), when you seek out to max out your character. Can someone explain why you feel the need to to that? It just seems totally boring to me and your character becomes a soulless tool. I role-play my characters and for me the goal with a game like Skyrim (or any TES) is to explore the vast world and inhale the atmosphere of the game. Not necessarily beat the game at every level like it feels like you max-outed people do. And it should feel like it is dangerous and that you can get hurt and not like a stroll in the park. I have a feeling, when reading various posts in this forum that the people that do max out their characters don't role-play that much? But I might be wrong.

So, can someone explain the urge to empower or max-out your character, and how do you play?

I absolutely despise power gamers, what's wrong with role-playing dike heads.
Sorry for my language, I just feel strongly about this.

Power gaming is just some gamers' nature.

Not my thing, but I do enjoy seeing my characters earn their stripes...in my view, I prefer to temper advancement with challenge, and rp'ing a character does that.

All games have to give their players a sense of achievement, regularly, to sustain interest. One of the main ways RPGs do that is through letting you develop your character and get them good stuff. If I have not got all the Magic schools to 100, well, there is something yet for me to achieve.

Skyrim is too easy, so that I actually have to handicap my character in various ways, and that cuts drastically down on the achievements I can get without becoming overpowered. But that's a flaw in the game, as far as I am concerned.

Oh, and this is not incompatible with roleplaying at all. Why should it be?

That's why for the guilds oblivion is better, you have to earn the rank of, lets say listner. In skyrim, two ingame weeks later you are listner

But...unless you go out of your way to gimp your character, Just playing the game casually makes you nigh unstoppable.

Whilst i don't get power gaming myself, i have to admit that it doesn't bother me others do it. If it wasn't for the fact that they come on here and tell you about it, you'd be none the wiser how others play their game. Now, had there been a PvP mode, I'd understand why you were getting your Daisy Dukes in a twist, but i'm completely at a loss why you're being so emotional about this? Drama Queen?

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?start=133&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1241&bih=577&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=459yGSjZaOLQvM:&imgrefurl=http://thebrokeninfinite.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html&docid=bqTkUMFV9VG_8M&imgurl=
I love yoda, again sorry for the lang but could not find a less proffane pic

I've never made a JoAT. Even when I tried, I stopped at level 48 and started a new character ._.

Level 81 is the hi-score. Top of the leaderboard. This is just some people's mentality, they see a number (lvl cap, armour cap etc) and they have to reach it.

I have to admit, even though it's a single player game, the way some people play it disappoints me. This is just one of those ways.

when I'm on my 4'th character I usually try to make the most powerful character i can I mean to me it's boring to be weak sometimes. I understand why people don't like it but once you do everything the game starts to get boring. I also use the oghma infinium glitch to remake characters because I run into alot of gamebreaking glitches

Huh? What has that link got to do with anything? I've re read my initial post twice now, in the hope I can see an iota of relevance between what i posted and the message contained within the pic you linked too. I even asked the guy sat next to me if he can figure out if both are related, but, nope, he can't. I think you either posted the wrong pic or you just posted it for the sake of posting a pic?

Being at a loss and being offended are two completely different things, mate. But then, i guess most people already know this?

Anyway, if you're just going to post irrelevant pics, then it's better we drop this and just ignore each other.

I'm all about the Hero's Journey. I never power-game, even in MMOs, when I probably should.

I power gamed in Morrowind, it ruined the game for me.

I try not to in Skyrim, but it's so easy to "accidentally" empower yourself. I don't like to gimp my characters as much as I don't like to overpower them. I pick a "Class" so to speak, and work the perks, equipment, etc, into what that character would logically use. A Nightblade would definitely use Invisibility, paralysis and even a little destruction here or there. It makes a better connection to the game world in my opinion.

Yes, because

I use to power game because of the followers glitch. Since they've fixed that I don't feel a particular need to. Though it is nice to get the max level of scaled quest rewards and artifacts.