Did Bethesda bother to increase mob health & damage to actually make this a game again? Killing everything in the game in 1-2 hits was really boring.

My characters walked through it on Master still.

The Legendary dragon is a pain in the ass to kill, but that's just because he has to much health and dragon ADD (OHHHH a mudcrab, let's fly 6 miles away to fight it, ignoring the dovakiin that's been pounding on me for 10 minutes).

Here's a thought, stop exploiting. Try going through the game with standard gear for a change.

It's still not that hard..

It wasn't hard, but it gets to the point where you have to not make the game too easy for yourself.

On this playthrough I didn't even touch the grindstone or workbench as that would also make the game too easy. I mostly use Dragonbane which I think does about 50 damage maximum and my armor rating is only about a 370 while my health is at 350, and I am not increasing my health ever.

I even upped my level to 99 so the enemies start scaling higher.

Yes it is, try playing the game without 100+ damage weapons and 667 armor rating on master and it will be hard. It then takes skill to kill enemies. Strategic healing, dodging, sneak attacks (not with ridiculous 30x multipliers) etc.

I imagine you would die extremely quickly if you played the game like I do, limited armor rating at higher levels, limited health and limited weapon damage on master.

The game being easy is your fault, if you don't enjoy playing like that then don't do it. Simple.

Don't use Smithing and/or exploits on your next character and I'm sure you will find the game more enjoyable. I havn't used any crafting skills on my characters for a while and the gameplay experience is certainly better for it. I wish I didn't have to ignore features though.

If you're level 81 like my character you'll find the strongest of strong enemies.

Vampire Nightmaster..i think thats what they are called is the strongest vampire type.

Also Legendary dragons are gonna be fun for you =P and it spawns for the Dawnguard if you're a Vampire armored frost trolls rather than weaker armored trolls and gargoyle brutes rather than normal Gargoyles.

There are random werewolves too and they have different tiers of strength I can't even begin to recall what the name of the werewolf that attacked me was called..I think it was Varja or something Werewolf Varja or Warja.

Couple other new tough enemies too, I think.

Vampire Lord is OP so if you use it you'll dominate everything regardless.

I love it.

I think you can still get reasonable challenge if you use crafting skills without touching the Restoration loop. The way Fortify Restoration increases the magnitude of enchanted items just smacks of oversight or something that should be outright removed.

That said, you can still make obscenely powerful weapons with a 130% Fortify Smithing potion and maxed Blacksmith skill + perks. 120+ damage on your weapon, plus 90 in Enchant damage can make for some quick kills. (Look here http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Smithing and here http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Weapons for the actual math).

On the defense side, without the Resto loop or Falmer helm stacking bug, you can hit armor cap (80% damage reduction) with three pieces of late-game armor, get 95%+ cost reduction in up to two magic schools, throw on around 2-3 50% elemental and magic resistances, water-breathing, muffle and limited carrying capacity, unarmed or a moderate health increase. Add quest-based perks, standing stones and blessings and you can definitely make yourself an all-around powerhouse, though not beyond the realm of being taken down by multiple enemies, guards or dragons, and that's on Adept.

To achieve that, however, you need to take around 28 perk points in crafting skills (at least 24), which could otherwise go into adding versatility to your character (Speech, Sneak, Lockpick, additional magic schools, better Blocking, etc.).

Maximizing your equipment within the game's parameters isn't exploiting. Making a one-hit-kill-anything-bow because dragons started pissing me off is exploiting (but they had it coming, try to fly away in the middle of combat now!).

I even took off most of my uber gear and just used my master smithed gear and it was still a snooze-fest. Combat just isn't that hard.

Edit: For clarity, combat was the snooze fest. The DLC isn't amazing but wasn't bad.

Personally, I dont count using the skills available in the game an exploit. Most of the skills in the game are useless anyway. Like the lockpick skill. I can pick a master lock at level 20 in it and hardly ever break a pick . the legendary dragons are powerful enough to make me want to make a one hit weapon, due to the constant death of NPS. The random vampire attacks that make ghost towns are helping that fact either

Gstaff already said if you complete Dawnguard's MQ they stop attacking towns.

So don't go near any towns until you finish it if you don't want NPCs to die, DON'T blame the game.

Then I will never finish the dawnguard side MQ. It will be only radiant quests for me then!

theres a bug that makes them continue even after you complete the dawnguard. google it

Agreed. I believe that the Restoration - Fortify Alchemy - Fortify Enchantment loop is a bug or design error, however, so I don't use it. The fact that you can get your damage and enchant values so high that it breaks the skills supports that theory. You can still get weapons up to 240-300 damage per hit without it while having crafting skills maxed. Likewise, you can hit armor cap easily with almost any type of armor without the resto loop.