It just came to me there. what is the thing that is lacking in skyrim? and the answer is a a real challenge.

Here's what i mean. in skyrim the game allows me to become as powerful as i want so why doesn't everybody become as powerful as they want. well its because the game losses any sort of a challenge when you can make armour and weapons powerful enough to kill an ancient dragon with only one arrow. you can also make armour so strong that you can become invincible and have unlimited amounts of magic and stamina.

so here is the solution to the problem that allows any person to make a super powerful character if they still want but also still gives them a challenge.
basically there will be an enchanted invisible spirit that randomly appears in any area of the map except for the towns and city's . or else there will be set area hot spots where you know you'll find this spirit roaming about.

the way that this spirit attacks you is that it summons up a clone of yourself to attack you. so depending on how weak or powerful you happen to be you will get an exact copy of yourself with all the skills, armour, weapons and spells that you posses fighting you. not only that but when you get attacked by a spell or weapon you will lose health and stamina even if it usually doesn't go down when fighting other things in skyrim.

so you would have the battle of all battles as you take on something that you are evenly matched against. in fact you might find it so tough to defeat yourself that the only other option is to run away or try and hide from it. but even going into sneak mode when standing next to your clone wont mask where you are it will only be when you manage ro run far enough away and duck out of your clones field of view will you be able to go into sneak mode successfully.

so the whole point being is that skyrim as it is now is more or less a nice stroll in the woods where you come across bears and trolls that you have learned to deal with. but this new spirit that can clone you would add a little more fear to your stroll through the woods not knowing if you are about to get attacked by it or not. and also it gives any player some real challenging gameplay again like when you first started out in the game. because we all liked the challenge and fear at the start of skyrim but we also like to level up and become powerful as we get further into the game.

so what do you think about this idea then.

They already did this in the Shivering Isles expansion for Oblivion. There was a quest where you had to fight your clone.

This could be interesting to see in Skyrim but only if it's one quest. I don't want my clones randomly attacking me whenever I enter a city.

yeah and oblivions had some problems too I remember my copy killed me in 2 spells there were many other bugs as well
but by far the most fun I had in oblivion hands down

BTDT, in many games, many times. No. Real answer? Roleplay. Don't play a JOAT who needs to do and be everything. Once you do that, it's very hard not to completely ruin teh experience for yourself and one playthrough is probably about all you'll get.

I will say only this: you make your own challenge. I've never believed in 'upping the ante' by implementing artificial challenges. As KDodds says, don't play a Jack of all Trades who's good at everything, make some boundaries for yourself, and you'll be just fine. After all, isn't that what roleplaying is about? Setting boundaries for yourself and your character within which you can fully develop it?

My very first character was a Nord who joined the Imperial Legion and used naught but Imperial Armor and Weapons. The challenge was plenty, I can tell you that.

Thing is, I don't really play a game like Skyrim for the challenge. It's an almost theraqeutic game that lets me do whatever I want and go wherever I want. That's why I love it, and I think difficulty spikes of whatever form would just bring that experience down for me personally. I have other games for that sort of stuff.

... Or you just make sure you're not overpowered to the max.

I killed my clone in SI with no problems all the time. No issue fooling the AI, just sneaking helped a lot, then sneak attack with poison or the anti mage spell who contained silence for my pure mage.

As for difficulty you have the difficulty slider. After being comfortable on master play an new game and don't put any points into health.
Having lots of health together with lots of healing potions make the game easy as you can just pop more potions then you get low on health. Heal over time potions would solve this to.

It also helps when you play with other house rules (apart from not putting any points into health).
You could, for example, not drink any potions while in combat - after all, it does kinda break immersion when you can just 'pause' the game during combat whenever your health gets low, chug down a few potions, et voíla.
Another example is dead=dead. Once your character dies, it's dead, and you stop playing it. I realise that's pretty hardcoe for most people, but it does add an extra dimension to your game when you can't juse faceroll everything and have to be careful around things.

There's plenty of challenge to be had imo.

Pfft. What a load of BS. I have a character right now who is geared around two handed, heavy armor, block, and uses Lightning Cloaks. Hardly a jack of all trades but once you get your enchanting to 100, its pretty much game over.

In order to "make a challenge for yourself" most people who have a decent knowledge of the game system and have put some time in, really have to kneecap themselves in order to find challenge. Its not about not exploiting the system, its more equivalent to tying one arm behind your back.

They could have gone three possible ways with the game: A game that is very well balanced that would require thought and strategy leveling up as you explore the world, a game focused on exploring and discovery that requires players to limit themselves, or a game that does a some of both. They seemed to go very heavy in the second option, but for a lot of people it leaves a diluted experience.

To the OP, I once made a thread that talked about why not have some Hired Heroes that are like Hired Thugs but a bit more random (spellswords, wizards, etc.) then three heavily armored nords that might come after the character if they get enough murders in a particular hold. Basically, we need some enemies that are very challenging in some places, like maybe in some out of the way dungeons or something. That way the people who just want to explore or RP or pick flowers or whatever people do that want the game to stay easy, but then have a few really tough enemies for people who want to go all out on their characters.

You're not as invincible as you think. My Imperial is L63, has an armor rating close to 700, and an axe that does 180+ damage per hit. And he still gets seriously hurt from time to time. And I'm not even playing on Master.

I end up quitting most of my characters in the early 40s to early 50s, because the only thing that really gives me challenges are Draugr Dethlords with Ebony Bows. I mean that is unless I get really lazy anbd too comfortable.

Also, I'm probably going to have to stop using the Ebony Mail on my current character because combined 5 pts damage cloak with the 10 pts of Lightning Cloak damage have me cutting through people like they are nothing. And she's only low 30s.