Isn't that your "problem"? If I get it right they found and (almost) killed your follower quite each time. They came searching for the noise and noticed your follower first then assumed they found what they are searching for and stoped searching once your folower went down...I find this quite realistic.
I admit that sneak is sometime overpowered in a sense that unrealistic...but not overpowered in a sense that you have a way easyer time with strong enemies...you need to invest more time in those instead of potions and things like that when using sneak. But I realy like the combination of sneak+follower when enemies notice the follower behind me first and come running past me and I kill them while they do that...that's pretty cool and realistic imo.

They didn't fix balance in the other games because balancing costs money. Looks like you're one of those who bought the 'choices' excuse. Now that Skyrim has attracted a whole new audience, they can't ignore the issue, hence why they announced they would implement balance and difficulty changes.

Actually the eye is half open not closing while my follower is down so they are still searching for me, the fact that they bump into me pushing me and don't notice me is ad AI. I'm try it on master see if it's better.

I would expect a master sneak to have legendary abilities, so if he is played carefully, I would hope only enemies with legendary or near-legendary perception would have a decent chance of detecting him.

When you sneak-attack an NPC, he and any nearby NPCs go on alert. They will even go on alert when they discover a corpse. They spend some time seeking out the threat, and during that time, the probability of your being detected increases. If they fail to find you, then they eventually return to their daily business. I really like the NPC behavior in this game.

One dude stood in front of me looking for me as I put 6 arrows in his chest. Yea AI is amazing. Oh yea and I had 30 sneak at the time.

While you were busily sinking arrows into his chest, would you have found it more realistic had he sauntered up to you like nothing is the matter and snatched the bow from your hands?

Stop using companions to lure away and tank enemies, you'll have a lot more fun as a stealth archer this way.

Followers don't actually expose you directly, at least not on higher stealth levels.
The follower is detected, this causes the enemy to turn towards you and attack the follower, doing this they might detect you. However it fun using the dagger on them as they run past.

This was also true in Fallout 3, remember some fights where you was part of an team and could work as an stealthy sniper, taking out enemies who attacked the team.

My only issue about stealth in the game is that it's to easy to hide, stealth 80 1/5 perks and you can hide in the middle of well lit tavern and pickpocket people.
You also have bandits running past you. That one should require higher sneak.

More on the subject, some anecdotal evidence:

Two necromancers in a cave: one is in front of a table full of bones and gore, the other is facing a library

Arrow strucks the one near the bookshelf. The other turns, rush to it and screams (it was a female breton or imperial):
"A... a corpse! This is terrible". Then, after a few moments facing the dead companion, she goes back to her table and resume examining those gory remains.

I couldn't laugh at the necromancer being disgusted by the sight of corpse while she lives in a cave full of decaying bodies! LOL

this is why i dont use the left side of the skill tree, it seemed a bit silly to me, and this is my first stealth playthrough, its not hard to read, but apparently it is to some people.

I think people would prefer this sometimes.....me, i like the laughs.

Sneak is a bit OP with daggers and all the perks BUT I have the full tree, only use light nightingale armour, 100sneak.. and I can't sneak up on a Skeever. Also if I am sneaking, my follower will stay sneaking and just take hits if they are spotted and will not fight back.

I don't know if Bethesda listened to the OP and nerfed Sneak badly but now it's completely useless for me. Enemies who are sitting with their back to me get off their chair to search for me when I'm over 20 feet away and sneaking with lvl 80 sneak and muffled boots (pathetic). I was levelling up pickpocket on bandits but now the only way I'll level up sneak is to go into the corner of a shop, jam a key down and go afk, and I guess it's back to constant saving as I have to pickpocket NPC's that I don't want to kill. Thanks Bethesda

I use my aura whisper sometimes and everyone in the whole dungeon knows where i am, kinda defeats the purpose.

I fail to see a logical connection between sneak and Overpowered here. Obviously it only works because Mobs have lacking short term memory and scout-on-danger skripts, not because of sneak. An obvious negating example would be if you have tried it with a melee weapon. Sneak works only once then they detect the player.


In other works, sneak is not to blame that enemies dont search everything, and stay on alert after someone put an arrow in their... head. Its an AI weakness.

Nah I've don it with sword, hit them then crouched behind pillar went back to hidden and did it again. Playing on master now and it's a lot harder so I'm happy.

I know what you mean, I don't think some things were thought through. Invisibility was a spell I was soooo looking forward to but it's absolutely useless and I can sneak, well i used to be able to sneak better without it.

I have no problem sneaking, but it makes no sense considering my glass armor goes CLINK CLANK BANG BANG STOMP ROMP whenever i sneak behind people, lol.

I find sneak to be inferior to Oblivion's..

Maybe thats the problem, if glass armour makes that sound, my dragon armour must go "RAWR, RWAR!" with each step

Haha I do that with my Argonian/Vampire Nightblade. Sometimes I can stealth kill them all before they even actually find me.

lol.

Undead are terrible to detect sneaking characters, makes sense they are animated corpses, animals are good so they are hard to sneak up on.
Also in Oblivion you could stand 4 meters away from an wraith pumping arrows into it.
However in Oblivion sneak detection depended a lot on the enemy sneak skill making bandits pretty hard to backstab.

This, in draugr tombs its very effect, but in the open world even at night I find it far less effective. Those darn forsworn have some sort of eagle eye vision cause they can spot me a mile away.

Sure sneak is OP but so is Smithing, Alchemy and Enchanting.
Imho sneak get really OP after you reach sneak 100 and perk shadow warrior.

But its really up to you how much you want to exploit all those OP skills.