I've been playing in Master lately, but I kind of prefer Expert.

On my first char I spammed smithing/alch.
More out of a love of alchemy and wanting to look awesome in daedric than anything else... wasn't aware of the god like qualities it gave. That char is boring even on master now as I can go AFK in the midst of many monsters and come back still at 90% plus health.

My 2nd guy didn't spam any craft skills and I spread my skills out so that I'm a jack of all trades type. Expert gives a challenge in this mode and on master I just get murdered 1 shot constantly lol

I've played 3 characters on masters level and am doing one now on adept and its far more relaxing, you don't have to constantly reload your game after dying to dragons and trolls I never die and never block I just power up stamina and power attack through the bad guys.

I'm playing Adept difficulty but I'm using Wars in Skyrim (Dark Rainbow) mod which makes the difficulty fluctuate by spawning tough rare mobs and other combat tweaks. It gives me surprising challenges while out exploring.

I am satisfied with Adept but I'll try other difficulties on the next characters.

Master.

I played Adept on my first character for about the first 15 levels but it became unchallenging. It became clear that if I was going to get the most out of the game and have the skills I'd chosen be put to the test, then Master was the way to go.

I tried Expert then after the first 5 minutes realised how easy it was going to be and started all over again on Master.

Lol... This is true.

I play it on the diffculty that best balances the game for my current character.

master. no exploitation.

for my DiD character, i've started with expert, but, it's even easy at lower levels. my next DiD will be master.

That sounds cool.

Too bad I'm on the XBox.

Same here, with every game I play. I may try the default setting (that would be Adept in Skyrim, correct?) of a game at some point just to check it out, but I usually just end up going back to the easy mode.
I will likely do that here, too.

i have to ask this question and i'm seriously interested in your response:

how often do you die on adept?

i ask because i'm playing a DiD character on expert and not dying. though, many close calls.

i'm interested in how many times you die, reload, etc.

do you have trouble with controls?

last 3 Characters have been on master. Two of those I have not taken any perks.
My current is on Master a Mage / Conj/Dest no perks no followers. Current level 36. I have been attempting to increase the difficulty without mods.

I play on master on my Nord warrior (close combat). And from time to time i have real challenges during battles. Especially when i fight groups of tough enemies (like 4-7). But i like challenges, so master difficulty is my choice.

add:
And yes, i don't use any difficulty mods, and i play with no followers.

I started on Adept and when it got too easy I moved to Expert. Right now I have three characters on expert and one on adept. I just play whatever feels right. When I first started playing Skyrim, Adept felt right. After I got more used to the flow of combat and how to use the controller, I moved to Expert.

If I am killing everything too easily, I move the slider one notch to the right. I have not tried Master in Skyrim yet. Tried it in Oblivion and many of the battles felt like a grind because it took so long to put down an opponent. For my money, Expert is a happy medium.

I play on adept, as that's the default difficulty and I haven't felt the need to change it.

I haven't started one-shotting enemies yet, and there are plenty of times where I've gotten into sticky situations (mainly being surrounded with one enemy being a boss), where being on higher difficulty may have made things frustrating. Perhaps once I start enchanting my equipment and begin to feel invincible, I'll consider moving the difficulty up, if I feel that I'm not being challenged enough.

My current character is a lv 30 Nord warrior who uses sword+shield and archery. He's also an alchemist, and his inventory full of health potions have come in handy during some of the tougher boss fights.

Right now I'm playing on Expert, it was on Master before but I lowered it because I just downloaded deadly dragons

Adept. I think it is much more balanced then any other Difficult where the Enemy just get a lot more health and more damage.

Novice

to all adepts players-

how often do you die?
how?

i honestly do not understand how adept is not too easy. the difficulty on expert is almost perfect, but, for a true challenge master is a must.

why is expert more difficult for you?

what are your reasons for reloads?

i just don't understand how you die most of the time.

Master, because I like the slightly added challenge in builds that allow it, and kinda frustrating feeling in the beginning when I'm not doomed to win everything and actually have to flee quite a bit, depending on my eagerness to explore dangerous places of course. I tend to use only one crafting skill, but I do the other two mostly for the money in order to buy the skills I don't feel level up naturally (based on the cowardly way I play I guess ).

Also, since I pretty much have to save spam (due crashes) with very limited logging in the game, I think master is about perfect for most builds. I wouldn't say this if the game had more hard core death penalties, which I'm kinda against due the crashing problem. It is outright tough in the beginning, where you have to flee a lot and load spam in trapped areas against hard enemies, and plan better what approaches the game allows you and utilize these more deliberately.

But now that I'm quite familiar with the Skyrim beastiary (if I see a certain enemy and I'm low level, I'm now smart enough to choose another route or wait it out), even master isn't that much of a challenge anymore without nerfing the game, which shouldn't be required.

Adept since this was the default. But I like it at this level and see no reason to change it. I'm comfortable here & still get a few surprizes, get my ass kicked once in a while.
I play the game for fun, to relax & enjoy the game and all the exploring that I can do.
This is my first ES game and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Is it perfect ?? No but still very enjoyable to play. I like the quests, and random events that happen. They can be cool and exciting to watch & see how good I can make them come out.

With my Nord sword and board character I play on expert. I find it challenging and more exciting.

This is the kind of elitist garbage people gripe about. Personally, I play on Expert while on my Sword 'n Board Cleric (Master on my Archer), but not everyone plays the same. Some people WANT to feel like a Demigod, smashing through hordes of enemies with little to no effort. Some people focus more on RP and exploration than combat strategy and tactics. Some people just aren't good at video games, but still enjoy them. This is the beauty of a single player game-- people are free to play how they want to play without worrying about the elitists jumping down their throats for "LOLEASYMODE."

/rant

Adept. Never really felt it should be changed.