I love how the [censored] can't seem to get through their skulls that having almost every skill in the game being broken or hideously abusable is a failure on the part of the company that made the game. EVERY playstyle is broken, ALL OF THEM.

Yeah, sounds like the only way for Bethesda to "unbreak" this game for these guys is to become their therapist and somehow control their OCD for them. Your compulsive behavior is not a failure in game design.

No worries though guys, you don't have to play this game. Go play all the other games just like it that are so much better because they aren't made by idiots as inferior to you as Bethesda's designers are.

I know I will enjoy taking it as slow as possible

It's funny what the warrior-players don't want is more in the direction of what magic users want but can't have.

There's just no real balance among the classes, sadly. I still think it's cool that just following your interests you sort of inadvertently became a god of Skyrim.

I try to make a conscious effort not to break the game. Not until I can fix it all the imbalances with the CK.

So.... Don't play on Adept?

The problem is it's too easy to start making all this godlike gear. I mean, smiths in Whiterun have been honing their skill all their lives, yet you can get legendary Daedric gear in an hour

I mean lol, all I wanted to do was become a regular old blacksmith, with some enchanting in the mix. I became a god.

It's nonsense to say balance doesn't matter in a single player game. It's not at all fun to be forced to choose between potentially holding yourself back, and feeling like you're exploiting the game. I think if they had gone with the more standard crafting system of finding different recipes to craft all sorts of different armor, and only used to skill to determine what you could craft, it would have been both more balanced, and more interesting.

I disagree with all these people who say there isn't a problem because you are "free to play however you want". Firstly, the OP wasn't intentionally trying to break the game. He just wanted to use certain skills because he thought they would fit his character. He did so, and the end result is that the game isn't any fun. Note the difference between this and exploiting. His intent was not to make the game too easy, but rather to pick the best perks for his character. the OP should be free to pick the skills he wants without breaking the game. If you find some absolutely bizarre way to break the game it is different because you have to expend effort (such situations don't just arise by playing the game). However, if you can easily break the game unintentionally, THERE IS A PROBLEM. Ask yourself the question,

"If the gameplay of TES centers around using the skills you choose in order to improve those same skills, and the very act of doing so makes the game way too easy, is the game playing the way Beth wants it to?"

If you are being honest with yourself, I doubt you can say yes. Why? Because you CANNOT play a warrior that specializes in smithing. That isn't freedom, that is limitation imposed by the game. If the OP can't play the way he would like to because the game doesn't work anymore, that is the game's fault! If, on the other hand, such situations could only arise by attempting to hoodwink game systems, then it would be another story. Having a reasonable class setup be unviable because it is overpowered is just as game breaking as one that is underpowered. At least in the underpowered case it can provide a great challenge. In the case of an overpowered setup, there is no feeling of progress.

Notes: I haven't played the game yet, but most accounts agree that a warrior with maxed out smithing and enchanting is plain overpowered. It also seems that you don't need to make ridiculous attempts to get ridiculous results (to me this speaks of improper balancing). If I am incorrect in these assumptions, please tell me why as I am genuinely curious.

How the game Should be Made:
1. Overpowered setups do not need to be entirely eliminated. However, you should not be able to make yourself overpowered by using skills normally. What this means....
a) if the normal course of leveling and perking a skill (like smithing) inherently makes you overpowered, something is wrong. If the game is naturally supposed to have challenge, then playing naturally should yield a challenge. Even maxing a particular skill should not make you able to 1 hit the most powerful enemies.
If you want to become overpowered, you should have to expend effort in order to reach this state such that it cannot arise by accident. This keeps freedom without ruining your game unintentionally.

2. You should not have to consciously gimp yourself in order to keep the game playable. This means you should feel like you can take the choices given to you and choose the best one. If you have 3 perks to choose from, you should be able to make the best choice without fear of ruining your game. Why? Imagine the following situations and choose which one you prefer...
You like playing basketball and enjoy a challenge. You can either....
i) play against bad players shooting with your wrong hand (because it would be too easy using your proper hand)
or
ii) play against better players with your proper hand and exert yourself fully.

Why is 2 more enjoyable? Because struggling against adversity as best we can is more fun than artificially creating adversity. It hurts immersion to constantly think "I want to play this way but can't because the game balance is such that it wouldn't be fun anymore." I want my character to struggle to survive in a harsh world, using whatever means are available to him. It wouldn't make sense for a character to to intentionally cripple himself, so why does it make any more sense to make me cripple him? Games are fun because they impose certain impediments to success. It is working around these that is fun. If my character sees better armour, he is going to want to have it. The goal of developers should be to make sure that armour betters my character reasonably (while keeping challenge). It is the impediments that keep things interesting. This isn't about min-maxing, it is about the feeling of bettering my character. That feeling is cheated without balance.

Just my 0.02x100

gotta love the people that complain about games. i mean there are two options, play the game and stop whining or dont play. easy

What an absolutely pointless and meaningless thing to say.

Remember those dynamic quests that the Devs promised that pop up based on your actions, you know kill a guy and his brother will come after you, or at least hire someone to come after you, etc?

If you are building artifacts to rival the works of the gods, NPC Adventurers should be popping up to try and take your stuff so that they can be more badass themselves. How many people have you killed in a Elder Scrolls game just to get the cool stuff they have? Yeah NPC's should do that too except this time you are the one being killed to get the stuff.

Too bad the Game is freaking Amazing! I don't agree with you at all, Skyrim is definitely a "proper" game, whatever that means; you know, considering they have sold millions of copies and have huge fan base with raving reviews about their game. Yeah, i'd believe Bethesda can make a proper game.

How about not putting on all those armour and weapons you created for yourself and use it only to make money so you can purchase from the shops? Turn up the difficulty a notch or two and see how well you handle Skyrim.

Great idea, that would be cool. But on second thought... wouldn't they be scared as heck to take your stuff, being that you are practically a demi-god and all.

It's definitely not a bad game. It's awesome!!!! There are just some things that need rebalancing that's all

Can you really get to Daedric gear in an hour without using the cheap tactics of fast-travelling between cities to buy them out of stock and repeat-building low level items over and over and over again?

Basically, a lot of you guys are "powerleveling" through this stuff and are expecting a sandbox game to be balanced for your play style. If they made smithing take 20 hours to level up for guy who use these tactics, that would mean it would take longer than I have to invest in this game over my lifetime for somebody like me to level up when I intend to actually "role-play" the majority of the content I play in the game.

Yes, you can OP yourself by exploiting the mechanics in ways they were not intended. Stopping you from doing so would be at the expense of limiting the options available to the rest of us who need things like fast travel to keep the time-sink manageable enough to enjoy the game in our limited amount of time.

No, pay attention, here, this is going to be a totally mind-crushing revelation for you, I'm sure, but there actually is another option:

Games can be changed. You can actually FIX things.

Whoa, sit down, don't hurt yourself, now...

Dont use exploits

The OP power leveled all three crafting skills to 100 by using the debatable exploit of fast traveling between the major cities and buying up vendor inventory then crafting the cheap basic level items over and over and over again to max those skills as quickly as physically possible without actually opening up the command console and cheating.

That's clearly "expending effort" and not "by accident". You don't have to "consciously gimp" yourself to avoid these types of actions.

You're both wrong... The game IS broken when using the mechanics in the way they were intended, and this IS on the highest difficulty.

And nothing is balanced.

Warriors snap dragons in half like twigs even without going through 1/10th of the effort to make an "ultimate" weapon.

Destro mages go from utterly overpowered to useless because of no scaling, and conjuration is all-powerful.

Rogues can "hide" in broad daylight while sitting on a guard's head. Meanwhile, Speech is utterly useless as a skill because there's no way Bethesda would ever actually make alternative quest routes that would involve use of conversation options.

Actually all the OP was doing was giving advice not to spoil the game for yourself because it makes the game boring. Which is fair enough.

IMO blacksmithing and mining could use a lot of work... because I find it very boring. I'm not interested at all in grinding any skill. I wish there was some interaction to it. I wish it was more difficult to collect the stuff to make armour. I like the dwarven metal, how you have to collect the artifacts, and then melt them down. Wish there was more stuff like that. I wish blacksmithing, mining and woodchopping were sort of mini-games, kinda like they are in fable. It's super amazingly boring just watching your character go through the animations.

Hmm well I didn't really exploit it at all, in fact I stopped at glass rather than taking it all the way up to dragon gear once I realized how strong I was getting. I didn't fast-travel between cities or wait for the merchant to restock. I simply bought up or collected the iron whenever I found it available and killed animals for the leather to make bracers. Took about an hr and a half to get up to glass without actively "exploiting". I bought iron maybe 4 times and then stopped because harvesting leather was cheaper/quicker. Even now I have enough ore/leather/petty soulgems in the stash to hit 100 Smithing and Enchanting in about 10 minutes. But I'm already doing such ridiculous damage on master, that continuing to hone my craft just makes the game less fun. It should be the opposite.

The fact is, it's too easy to level crafting. Becoming a master smith from making iron daggers and hide bracers is STUPID! You shouldn't become a god from speccing as a blacksmith.

I might have done something like that if I didn't find having a job within a game a horrible bore.

Personally I enjoy [censored](pwning) everything and anything in my path, it isn't boring for me at all.
To each their own.