For me, the crucial experience of a TES game is crawling out of a hole with rags to your name, being kicked around as scum for a while, ridiculed as an errand-boy, gradually become aware of your true potential, work on job after job, then become one of the foremost experts on power in the world. Literally, in some TES games you rise from rags to riches, and grow from a nobody to god-like power.

My point is that there should never, ever be an upper limit to how powerful your character can become. Well, except for the obvious fact that Bethesda can't program an infinite game, my point is that "too powerful" is a misnomer. Nothing is too powerful for a TES game. Balance should be about the other factors. For instance:

If smithing seems too powerful, it's probably because you can level it much faster compared to other skills. (Thus, the balance is in the skill levelling, not the power you can create)

If enchanting seems too powerful, it's probably because other skills don't scale high enough to compare. (Destruction, for instance, caps out rather quickly)

The take-away here is that too much power is never a problem in TES, what needs to be fixed is the other skills that aren't powerful enough. Furthermore, increase the amount of effort that it takes to become the premiere grandmaster smith that you wish to become, so that it seems more appropriate when you get there. Years spent forging every conceivable type of armor netting you the experience necessary to create the most powerful protection imaginable... well that makes sense. Crafting 450 iron daggers? Well, that's probably a stretch.

You see where I'm going with this? Nerf nothing! Buffs and balance is about ratios, not about hard caps on the upper limit.


EDIT:
I'm not making one point clearly enough for most, so I'll repost it here.

This is key. It doesn't bother me that I can level smithing to 100 in an hour. If you figure out a way to make that happen, fine. What bothers me is that I can do it in an hour with iron daggers only. The comparison is not logical at all. To become a master smith, capable of refining the most advanced dragon bone armor in the game, I should need to have experience in all sorts of different armors.

That's why smithing needs to level in a way that is exponential, not linear. I should not get the same XP for an iron dagger that I get for daedric armor.

make it harder to level smithing is basically what your trying to say?

Among other things, yes. Curiously enough, I suspect they are already doing that. The game guide and even the tutorial in the game itself state that smithing levels based on the value of the item you create. That is not the case, however, so I think that they are going to fix it. Knowing that, it might be the same for enchanting as well.

i hope so its ridiculous how i can make 100 iron daggers and gain 30 levels lol

Just, what the.. It''s not broken. If you powerlevel it, you have no right to complain. If you don't powerlevel it, it's not OP at all.

Even if you do OP it, I hardly see how it's OP. I've seen LP'ers on youtube on normal difficulty power it up then get destroyed by one bandit in full daedric/dragon plate armor. Great, you get the best armor/weapons, but you lsoe 10 levels or more, and you lose all those other perks you could've possibly put into blades, blocking, heavy armor. ETC.

Point being, it's not broken and it doesn't turn you into some sort of godlike character unless you do the whole alchemy, enchanting and blacksmithing routine.

ferod, the point isn't about how powerful you can get, it's about what it takes to get there. If you invest the exact same amount of hours "powerlevelling" smithing that you spend "powerlevelling" single handed, you'd get about half as far, or less.

That's the point. Of course, any skill can be powerlevelled and thus over-acquired. The point is whether or not they compare to each other. Smithing and enchanting are by far the two fastest skills to level, which is why the are often perceived as too powerful. Especially when you take into account the fact that they give you something equally, if not more, valuable than the other skills that level more slowly.

Smithing is already hard to level if you aren't exploiting. So why make it even harder?

Depends on how much you exploit it. I don't think Bethesda play testers sat on the forge and powerlevel maxed out a skill like Smithy simply by grinding out cheap resources like iron daggers all the way to Max level. Then feed those "Big Bonus" crafted items to a semi low level toon.

Because you want it to take about as much time as the other skills?

This is one thing that needs to be changed.

The time is based on the user. It's only fast to level if you choose to abuse the levelling system.

Carry a pickaxe, mine and smelt your own ore, you'll find it does indeed take the same amount of time as other skills. Smithing, is fine.

You guys are missing the point. I can make a full set of Ebony armor and it will gain me the same amount of experience in smithing as 4 iron daggers. Can we agree that this is a little bit flawed? My point is that smithing should require you to start making more complicated armor and weapons on a gradual, sliding scale. Each time you make an iron dagger, it should be worth less (relative) experience.

In order to keep progressing, then, you need to make something fancier, like steel, elven, glass. You should not be able to become the best smith in Skyrim without working with any of the more complex or advanced materials.

And what about those people who don't exploit? I don't spam daggers, but always upgrade weapons before selling and make jewelry and proper armors for sale. Despite that my smithing level is low compared to other skills. I know that I could exploit, but I don't do it. if smithing gets nerfed or something then it will be even harder for normal players to level up? If that's what is being suggested here then I don't agree. just don't exploit if you don't want...lol

EDIT: read the above post and I agree. Smithing daggers should grant less experience

Dead on. I hit over 70 smithy on my first toon (not knowing any better, was like wow this is neat!!) just by making Iron Daggers,lol

Alchemy at least feels like you "Earned" the skill. Maxing out Smithy is just a joke

I agree. Let people power level smithing and enchanting, it only harms games by telling them they can't be overpowered. It's generally not fun to grind away smithing and enchanting so if you decide to do it then you might aswell get the reward of been over powered. Problems come from been over powered when something you can't control makes it overpowered. Like someone playing another class in a mmo.

What constitutes as exploiting smithing leveling?

I somewhat agree with you. I really like becoming uber powerful in TES games. It's part of the point.

HOWEVER, there is such a thing as overpowered in my opinion. Here's how. In TES games, you get better at stuff the more you do it. If you want to play a certain way, you will naturally get more powerful at that strategy. If that increase in power naturally gets to a point where it is IMPOSSIBLE to find a challenge, then it is overpowered. There should at least be a difficulty level where a challenge can be found because some players want a challenge no matter what, while others want to progress to god status (me included).

Your arguements are pointless. *smithing levels too fast*.
No, you're levelling it too fast in an abusive way. That's all there is to it.

If you choose to make daggers, horde money to spend on ignots/iron ore. You're the problem, not the code in the engine. If you want it to level slow, level it slow. Mine your own ore, make armor relative to your level, that you can give to your followers. Jeeze.

I agree and disagree to what you said. I believe the people who rant about the power you gain from crafting just went out from the getgo and powergrinded those skills to max first before anything else. If you just play the game and lvl up the skills with what you find it WILL take a considerable amount of time to get those skills high enough to make any significant difference in game difficulty. People say they maxxed smithing just by making daggers in an hour! This isn`t the games fault, it`s the player who can`t help himself from manipulating the game mechanics to get to that goal in that time. The game wasn`t meant to be played that way and I think most of vet elder scrolls players DON`T play that way because they just want to enjoy the game. For a good majority of players, they fiind the journey to getting powerful more important and fun then being powerful.


Now on the other hand we have the group of players who wish to get that power as fast as they possinly can. There are no restrictions and there really shouldn`t be any for people who choose to play like this. However, the game wasn`t scaled for this kind of play. And I don`t see any reasonable way to make the game increasingly difficult for crafters while still keeping it a decent challenge for people who invest skill perks elsewhere. It was designed to give hundreds of hours of playtime by doing the questlines and exploring. Elder scrolls games weren`t really meant to be played as number crunchers but now with these crafting skills people are assuming they need them to be most effective.

The main difference I see is. The people who max the crafting from the start will maybe a game that lasts 40-50 hours and they will become bored and either start over or find something else to do. The people who raise the skills with what they find and take their time will have playtimes of 100-? how many hours because they are playing it like how bethesda imagined they would, slowly. Morrowind, Oblivion, they weren`t a race to power and this game is no different.

Yes but with power options that the Elder Scrolls has you can create limits for your characters and that is good for roleplaying value. With the diminished magic system in Skyrim we have low limits in what we an do and our choice is restricted.

This game is all about choice, you should be able to make yourself demi god like, if I want to be weaker it should be that way. I make a lot of characters and play several different ways and in Skyrim we are limited in terms of the boundless limits of the past games.

Oh yes my smithing and enchanting are very low right now with the character I am playing, see there that is a roleplaying choice.

It would help in the merchants didn't sell dozens of leather and iron bars, too...that just compounds the problem.

Something else i've noticed is that smithing scales rather well with your level. If you keep your smithing level at about the same level as your combat skills, you end up feeling like a fairly balanced character. This isn't how it works with enchanting, unfortunately, which is probably due to the differences in soul gems. It seems like you're expected to use grand soul gems even at level 1 just to get a semi-decent enchantment. I, for one, decided that enough was enough and went out, mined about 50 silver ore, made 100 silver rings, soul trapped 100 wolves/skeevers/elk, and proceeded to level my enchanting to around level 70, and get all the perks that could help with it. I then drank an enchanter's draught, used a grand soul gem, and got an enchantment that gave about 32% resistance to lightning.

I then proceded to do a dungeon and get a helmet that gave SIXTY percent protection from lightning. I mean, i should at least get 3-5% resistance if I use a petty soul gem at level 1, not a measly 1%, and why on earth did some dude go enchant a hide helm for 60% lightning resistance!?! Does that make any sense?

It seems like enchanting is almost useless for a load of statistics until you actually max it out; so far I only have been using my own enchants because none of the gear that's been looted has fit my character design.

On the other hand, with the same level and no potion i went and made a pickpocketing ring that gave more than any other item in the game >.<

Again, I think that you are missing my point. Will you please agree or disagree with this statement:



I want to agree with you, but your argument is simply "to make it slower, do it more slowly." That's fine and good, but it's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the comparative things, not about the absolute rate at which you can advance it. Please phrase your response to the comparison?

Well I've got to say, at early levels, smithing is quite powerful. I had a perk on one-handed and one in smithing. Found a steel sword. Upgraded it. Before I upgraded it, it did 11 damage. After upgrade, 15 damage. And my smithing is very, very low and already is worth 20 points of one-handed skill. I was also able to smith dwemer gear to myself at level 8.

The further into the game you go, the more powerful smithing becomes. A full melee char should indeed specialize into smithing, because if he doesn't, he will do only half the damage of what he could do. I think it's not enough to make the XP-gain from smithing change, but also slightly limit the power you gain when leveling up smithing to 100. For example, if 100 smithing would allow you to make an iron dagger do from 12 damage to 25 damage, make it so it's 20 instead. Etc.

I haven't tested out enchanting almost at all, so I can't say anything about that.

It depends on how you do it. I leveled my smithing by hunting almost every animal I saw while exploring. I make the finest leather bracers in skyrim! I didn't stick one perk gained by smithing into smithing. I used them for other stuff I use. I don't feel op at all. Just right in fact.

Enchanting would be absolutely wretched if it were any slower than it is now. You don't even reap any benefits of the skill until you hit 80!