I generally only have this issue with males, though the Mer are also difficult to make it look like someone in their mid-twenties. Every guy I make looks 40+ no matter how I move the sliders.

Oddly enough I mentioned this before the game came out when we got the pic of the pre-sets. Everyone assumed that the preset could be changed with some kind of age slider so it didn't seem like a big deal at the time.

I have no trouble making a youngish female pc, but even they are 25+

Probably the best I did was this young Breton (no mods): http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/images/649591-1325687655.jpg

But the men are just old no matter what you do. This one required a smoother skin mod: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/images/649591-1327675311.jpg

Its REALLY easy to make an old/young looking person. Its not very notacable if youre not in HD

One of the complection options, gaunt cheeks, grey hair = convincing oldie

I agree, OP! The Bretons especially suffer from the wrinkle problem.

Complexion =/= age lines.
Also, I would support a thread that asks for the six slider to be turned into a text selection option.
six should not be a slider. I don't care what surgery you've had, your gender is whatever you want it to be, but your six is anatomical and is either male or female.

Also also, the demographic for players might be 17-25 but the characters have to be older than that. This is fantasy universe set in a medieval-esque time period (with magic and elves, so think D&D). People didn't really become good at things until mid-twenties or later and those are just simple things like how to swing a sword properly. Mages probably had to spend a few more years studying magic before being able to cast spells without blowing themselves up so add 5-10 years on top of the base age range of 25-30. Not to mention this is just for human characters who have a "human" lifespan. Elves have longer lifespans in TES, correct? Then they should age and mature differently. We consider our kind to be advlts around the age of 17 in most cultures. Elves might not consider their kind advlts until their much much older, like around 50 or something. So an Imperial/Breton/Redguard/Nord warrior might be only 20-25 whereas a Dunmer/Altmer/Bosmer warrior might be something like 40. Add 10+ years for mages, depending on race. You might be able to take the lowest possible age in that base range of 20-25/40-50 or even subtract a few years for stealth classes since they tend to be tricky little pranksters who learn their craft living on the streets or whatever as a part of life whereas no one forced their kid to learn magic or swing a sword (I hope). I don't even know what to do for Orcs, Khajit, and Argonians. I can't imagine Argonians live for very long seeing as how most everything in their native homeland wants to kill them and everything outside of Black Marsh wants to enslave them. Not the best living conditions, and in the first place they are the "beast" races so they probably only live long enough to breed and are then no longer biologically useful to their race and so die a natural death at the ripe old age of...40?

Just saying...you can't roleplay a 17 year old master of the mages college. It makes no blasted sense.
And no, "A wizard did it!" doesn't apply here.
However, vampirism does. Just ask Babette.

I see your reasoning here, but Nirn is not DnD, and it's not even a medieval setting when you get right down to it. Also, the fact that there have been young looking npcs and player characters in previous games suggests that younger people do in fact do adventurous things. It wasn't until Skyrim that character models looked this old, particularly male ones, which is another nonsensical issue. Looking at the game files of oblivion, there were actual ages that went along with the age slider. The youngest you could make your character look according to the files was "15" and the oldest was "65". Elves, particularly dunmer, continue to look like young advlts well into their 50's and are treated as young advlts well before that. This is particularly evidenced through the books on Barenziah when other elves are being described from her perspective, as well as "interviews" with dark elves. High elves live exponentially longer, and many use magic to maintain their youth. The altmer who led the anvil mages guild was well over 100 years old remember? She defeated Lorgran Benirus a century ago, yet she looks younger than every male in Skyrim. Long story short, elves look young for a long time, so they should be able to look young in game.

So to sum things up: there have always been young adventurers on nirn and players should have the CHOICE of being one of them.

And all mine would be young. I personally dont like the old mage stereotype. I like how in TES lore, the greatest sorcerers look young because the magic keeps them youthful. I love making characters that look innocent and are easily underestimated, only to have them destroy an entire bandit clan.

There is. It's the complexion slider. To the left you are around 20 to the right you are around 50.

Unfortunately, i cranked that to the leftmost (youngest) for all races, and almost all of them still possess glaringly obvious wrinkles
In the end i was lucky someone used the child's face texture and modded it into the character creation screen; only then was i able to make 20+ looking characters.

Before that all of them looked 40+ what with their wrinkles all over the place. I was kinda pissed about that considering i could have a massive age difference in oblivion. Seems like bethesda wants everyone to have a old grumpy dovahkiin.

And a bust slider for all our female characters, because they are LEGION.

On a serious note, height also affects movement speed so it'd more or less break the system if they let you choose your character's height...not to mention everyone would be tall as hell in order to run faster.

Both an age and height slider are needed.