A range that atleast doubles the Master difficulty, something like this would take a few hours to implement since the difficulty setting only adjusts the Damage taken and Damage received multipliers.
On master difficulty you deal x0.5 of your Adept damage and take x2.0 damage. Which is nothing compared to howmuch Oblivion and Morrowind handled difficulty; At the maximum difficulty, you deal 1/6th your damage (x0.167) and and take x6 damage (x6.0).
I don't care for boasting in a single player game, but it is the only way I can get my point across;
I need to play the game on master, naked, without armor spells, no smithing, no enchanting, no potions; just a weapon, block and some healing spells, to feel actually challenged. And many here feel the same. We don't want to not use 80% of the game to have fun, just because bethesda cant balance.
The difference between the casual audience and the hardcoe is the mindset; We don't want to clear any dungeon without dieing, mistakes need to be punished.
Whatever happened to actually refining your tactics, double checking your gear, studying your enemy's attacks, and improvising your way to victory against what only a few tries ago seemed impossible?
For the experienced RPG players, its natural to use smithing, because its efficient. But how could anyone know that using certain skills takes away the challenge and fun of the game. I don't think it is right for the player to be forced to not use a large amount of the game to have fun when it is so easy for Bethesda to make the difficulty range a bit more fitting for the more experienced players.
I'm not asking for smithing or enchanting to be fixed, since that, sadly, is obviously too complicated to balance.
If you disagree and think the game is hard enough as it is and we should just stop abusing enchanting and smithing, you should reread this post. There are people who'd like to be challenged, a better slider is not much to ask for when so many elements have already been dumbed down a bit.