But I want that build because it's my game and it's offered to me to do. The game should be balanced based on what it offers the player.

I think people are sort of missing the point. There's nothing wrong with people wanting a more challenging game. It's not a judgement about people who don't want that challenge. That's what difficulty sliders are for, and if the difficulty sliders did a good job scaling difficulty, there wouldn't be very many complaints.

The problem is that whenever someone says: "The game's not challenging enough" the response is always "Then don't build your character to be OP". The problem with this answer is that it forces players to choose between progression and difficulty: for players who want a good challenge, there's no way to RP a character who is good at combat without becoming OP. Every time they put points into combat perks and upgrade their gear they sap challenge from the game to the point where it's not fun. To counter this, they're being told not to play characters that are good at combat. If I can't invest perks in skills that make sense for my character, and use the best gear available then I can't play the character I want to play. There's no reason why people should have to make that choice.

The difficulty sliders should be strong enough to create challenges for players who want to invest all of their perks in combat and kit out with the best gear possible and still find a challenge. That's the only reason for them to exist, and if they don't, they're not doing their job. Hence the reason why DE calls it a design flaw. I agree.

This.

This has been Travis's tips.

Then you have to accept the consequences of your choices.

The whole point is that there shouldn't be a combo that allows it, at least not if boss enemies are actually supposed to offer a challenge to geared-out characters. What we've been saying is that enemies that are meant to be difficult should remain so regardless of the character's power level; currently they don't do that, though, with the result that gearing up to fight them turns what should be a difficult (or at least tactical) fight into a walkover.

The massive power disparity between top-end characters and top-end enemies caused me to retire two stealthy archers, because they were multiple orders of magnitude stronger than even the toughest opponents. Such a large disparity should not exist, because it essentially means that developing a character to be powerful is a waste of time; that should never be the case, because one of the key aspects of character growth is gaining the ability to take on the most difficult opponents with at least a reasonable chance of victory.

Extremely well said. Bottom line, X, Y, and Z need a real good looking over and rebalancing, so that we aren't forced to tie a hand (or two) behind our backs to enjoy the game. We should be able to utilize *every* feature that exists in the basic game, and still have a true challenge at some difficulty level.

I'm sorry CCNA, but it seems you clearly don't know anything about game design.

If a mechanic is in the game and is given to the player to use, then the game should be balanced to what the player can and can't do.

Another difficulty level doesn't hurt anyone, but I don't think it helps those who say master is too easy (I assume it's easy because they are using a lot of smithing/alchemy/enchanting). If they add super master, players who use the craft trinity will keep using it to match the "difficulty" of super master. What would help is Oblivion level scaling, but that does hurt other players (unless it only applied to one difficulty level, which I doubt will happen).

Would the 1337 gamers be satisfied if Beth limited folks to choosing one crafting skill or coming up with some other way to break that cycle. I assume that this is why the game is too easy. I've switched over to master difficulty and it is ridiculously hard (I wear iron stuff, smith minimally, and don't use other crafting skills). I've only tried it on my lower level character.

And to the above: That might be true, but as many others have said, "Until that 'balance' is restored or added, there IS a way to simulate it... Just slow down on the crafting trinity." Personally, I hate grinding them. I don't see how anyone finds it fun, but they must if they think master is easy. Who would grind them, if they didn't want to either create an OP character or just really enjoyed the crafting skills? Since you obviously don't want to one shot Alduin, it must mean you enjoy the crafting (unless there's some other possibility I'm currently ignorant to...likely).

I loved crafting, I also play as Warriors of some types, so the best equipment is important to me.

A lot of people happen to disagree. Unfortunately for you, the game was designed to please the crowd who likes to put time in and become OP. Oblivion scaled everything, and it seems that the majority of people (at least according to forum polls) wanted something more like Fallout 3.

I don't mind the OPness (wow, that sounds wrong), but I understand why a lot of folks are annoyed. This discussion seems really circular.

"Using what they gave us, we shouldn't be OP."

"TES games let you be OP."

"It's not fun, if there's no challenge."

"You can create your own challenges."

"Beth should be the one creating challenges, not us."

Neither side is wrong here. Another difficulty level doesn't help because you can just craft your way to that one being easy, too. What would help is another style of level scaling, but why would they change that when an equal or greater number of players like it the way it is? Unfortunately for those dissatisfied, the game will not change that much at this point. The only options are gimping, continue pwning, or hope that Beth will gimp the crafting skills.

To Darkside: Ah.. Well, that is a pickle, then if you love having the best gear.

Well you see, there is the conundrum. Master difficulty is hard for your minimalist style, because you stick to crap weapons and don't use crafting effectively. You have the option to lower the difficulty to match your style, and that works for you. But for those who choose to use all of the features and items that were put into the game, even without any serious grinding efforts, even Master diff quickly becomes pretty dull and easy. Then they have nowhere to go, unless they join the legions of nullifiers who've chosen to gimp themselves just to get around the lousy game balancing and thus find some semblance of challenge in the game.

Okay...Darkside Eric and the rest of you...you win.
Skyrim is built wrong, it has too many flaws to be a great game, and Bethesda should fix it.

Does that make everything all better for you?



I'm not trying to be a smart ass here...but Skyrim is the game that Bethesda released.
You can either listen to the tips and gameplay advice mentioned here many times, or you can continue to complain about being overpowered in playing the character that you made. It really doesn't matter what you think Skyrim should have been. It really doesn't.

The game isn't going to change.
Either you will, or you won't.

But whatever...you're missing a great and fun game if you don't change your belief on what you think Skyrim should be.

I'm done here.

Whoa, there. My skyforge steel battleaxe is "superior." Crafting is effective, even without creating 1000 iron daggers. But like you said, I play mostly on adept, so wearing low tier armor is totally viable. But like I said, increasing difficulty doesn't help your camp... you need a level scaling makeover. I'm afraid that it won't happen.

Seems it will.

The last option is the best one to hope for, IMO. It is kind of silly that you can stack up so many +smithing or +enchanting items and potions at the same time, besides already having the crafting skills maxed up to 100 and perks in those trees that jack up the effects even higher. You can buy or enchant multiple items with really high +smithing (don't know the max amount, haven't tried to do it myself, but it is a LOT), plus you can use like 5 or more similar but slightly differently classified potions of +smithing, for another ungodly tally... why is this necessary? Why was this even ever allowed by the game devs? Didn't they know that anyone with a 3rd grade diploma and a desire to build a powerful char could figure out how to use all those +crafting things to make weapons and armor that turned them into pure gods, even on Master level? I still shake my head whenever I think about that design choice.

Haven't specialized in enchanting yet, but from my experience with blacksmithing, it would be incredibly easy to fix. Make it so that no character could utilize more than three +smithing enchants on gear at once, and limit them to a max effect of maybe +15 each. So the max would be +45, not way, way over +100, which it is now. Then only allow the use of one smithing potion at a time, and make the most powerful one only about +30 or so. No stacking of any crafting potions. That's just a quick rough-assed attempt to re-balance the smithing craft, but I bet it would make for a lot better gameplay than the bizarre way it works now. They'd have to work out the exact numbers and whatnot, even those numbers might be too high, in actual practice. But it's that kind of reworking that the crafting system needs, to balance the game for everyone, even the power players.

No, they need to fix crafting, at the least. There are other things that can be done to improve balance, but that's the biggie.

I don't think they'll change the way enemies scale.

They might fix "exploits." Like the crafting trinity. But the camp who finds the game too easy says they don't use "exploits." So... you guys do use exploits and are still disappointed when you pwn?

So, this topic should be "Fix the crafting exploits."

Inevitably the responses will be, "Don't use them." I can't help but agree with that.

Well, let's see. Assuming you have the 15X backstab bonus with a dagger and the gloves from the DB that doubles that, you have a 30X bonus. Take a daedric dagger with a fire enchantment on it that likely does at least 30 damage per hit and you have: X equal to or greater than 30(30)= 900. At minimum.

So yes, they should die in one hit.

The 15X backstab is overpowered; no doubt about it. I really don't know what place it's supposed to have in the game. Most assassinations aren't against opponents with such high health. Many are against NPCs with the same health as a rabbit (for all practical purposes).

That said, one doesn't have to take that perk if they think it'll ruin the game. The same goes with archery and the 3X sneak damage. But then there are people who create bows that do 600+ damage per shot. What do they expect is going to happen? Even if opponents had three times the amount of health they'd go down in 1.5 shots instead of 1.

I play the game as is. I don't abuse the system. I level normally and use the equipment I find. When I can enchant or improve something, I do so. But I don't go crazy with it.
The only thing I ever spammed was conjuration and frankly, the Twin Souls perk is seriously OP. I can win almost every battle every single time by using it. So I limit my use of that feature. When an ancient dragon shows up though, he's going to be facing me, a follower, and two atronauchs because on Master, an ancient dragon can kill me in less than one full breath. The right thing at the right time.

Except I don't have to abuse crafting at all if I make an Assassin or Stealth Archer archetype.



I played the game "as is" as well.

I joined the DB, got the gear, leveled Stealth via DB missions and TG missions, assigned Perks into that Stealth (like normal) and got myself a Daedric Dagger through normal means. Through normal play, I broke the game because the game is not balanced for all types of normal play.

You're also offered the opportunity to take a kitchen-knife and murder your neighbors.
If you really applied yourself, you could make a jury-rigged flamethrower and burn their house down too.
Heck, the world is FULL of all sorts of possibilities that I'm pretty sure you haven't taken because they come with some unpleasant consequences.

So why can't you apply that same reasoning to Skyrim? Hmm?
But instead, you argue what effectively amounts to saying that the person who built a wall is personally responsible for stopping you smashing your head into a bloody pulp on it. Afterall, if the wall is offered to you, you must feel compelled to brain yourself on it. Self-responsibility is for losers, amirite?

I'm not saying you're the one doing this, but people know how to make their characters OP. They sit there doing it and then complain about how they're too OP. The bottom line is, the game currently lets you become one-shot-dragons-OP. So, if you don't want to be, you've got to control yourself a little. Scale back the exploits a little. If they fix the crafting exploits, you're good to go.. Maximize to the fullest and maybe still have a challenge on master.
You might be right. I've not tried a sneaky man on master, just warrior. If sneaky man is as OP as the crafting trinity abominations, then it would require a whole new way to fix (if it needs fixing).

Sorry, but that's a completely inaccurate anology. In this case, it was the devs putting a wall in your way, when none should have been there. With proper balancing, there would have been no such wall. With the crappy balancing of Skryim, the wall exists where one should not be. If a game is balanced properly, a gamer does not expect this wall to be there, and should be able to run at full speed without the expectation of running into one. Therefore it is only natural that the average player, not expecting any such walls, are startled and angry when they ram into it at full speed while coming around a blind corner. It is Beth's fault for building this bad, bad wall- not the gamer's fault for hitting it. It's our self-responsibility to complain about this (lack of balancing)wall, until it is properly removed. They did indeed build this wall, as your anology says, and it is their personal responsibility to remove it as soon as possible to prevent more head/brick collisions.

Yes, because comparing real life to a video game is a game winner in a discussion.

It's a video game containing mechanics that break the balance of itself.

We're not entering cheat codes and then [censored]ing about how none of the enemies can compete against us.
We're not using console commands or Game Genies or things of that nature and then complaining that the game is now no longer fun.

We're playing the game as per normal mechanics that were given to us. Why the hell are you going to give us the choice to drive a tank if all you want us to fight is bunnies?

People who always play at 150% Maximum Power, with all Best Equipment, Best Perks, Best Build, Best Everything, etc? While Beth may "improve" the balance, you guys are never going to get the game you want from them. Beth just doesn't make Nintendo Hard games. And people expecting it of them are going to be disappointed.