'Pretty quick' is a relative term. I imagine yours and my definition of it differ greatly.

Uhhh... The OP makes little to no sense to me. My first character was an orc warrior and I wanted him to specialize in two-handed weapons, heavy-armor and smithing. Guess what, I got hilariously overpowered with Smithing, by playing the role I wanted to. I didn't want to become overpowered and one shot dragons, yet the game made that possible and I didn't abuse anything. I leveled smithing up naturally, I always had about 20 iron ore when coming from my adventures and I logically made them into ingots and later into iron gear. The game is flawed because smithing gives the same amount of xp from an iron dagger and a daedric battleaxe. And I wasn't gonna gimp myself by selling the ingots for 5 gold to the merchant when I could turn them into something that I could sell for 10-20 gold.

Conclusion: It's too easy to become overpowered and that makes it boring. And I'm not gonna make a new character.

Maybe you should develop a sense of free will, and take the responsibility of choosing whether or not you wish to be overpowered. As being "OP" is subjective, find a happy medium that agrees with your definition of "balanced".

It really isn't hard, and if you can't do that, perhaps you're not old enough to play skyrim or not mentally mature enough to deal with its themes and content.

I too have been playing since Daggerfall (only vague memories though since I was just a kid then) and especially Morrowind. You always had to put some sort of restraint on yourself not to become overpowered but in Skyrim it is too easy and can happen without doing it on purpose really. I know it is almost imposssible to create balance in open world such as these but they DO still need a ROUGH balance.

I agree with then original poster.

Why is the simple concept of; 'Something makes the game less fun for you personally, so don't use it.' such a difficult concept for people to understand?

Freedom is one of the ES series' selling points, you can choose whether or not to be overpowered, you can choose whether or not to undergo any of the activities or actions that can make you so powerful.

Not a single one is forced upon you, you don't need to use Smithing, you don't need to use Enchanting, you don't need to use Alchemy.

Hell you don't even have to have dragons in the world if you don't want to. Fact is when it comes down to it, most things are up to and entirely decided by the player. It's our choice to be overpowered or not, it's our choice to be weak or strong. The game doesn't force you into being a demigod, if the game is too easy for you on Master as a pure warrior, maybe you should put all your points into Magicka (Something you won't use) rather than boosting your Health and Stamina up to obscene levels that make you borderline immortal.

Everything that can make you 'overpowered' is optional. Don't like it? Don't use it.

Instead of trying to ruin everyone else's fun for the sake of your own, how about adjusting the way you play so that it's actually fun for you personally. Bethesda aren't going to fix what isn't broken (Especially when they seem to break what they fix. XP) This obsession with balance drives me mad, Skyrim is not an MMO, what you do with your game doesn't affect anyone else, every single damned balance issue is entirely avoidable. Stop looking for things to [censored] about and enjoy the game for what it is, if it's really so terrible to you, trade it in and bugger off of these forums, I'm sick of reading your complaints.

If you don't like reading people's complaints then don't read them. Exercise the same self-control you insist that others should have.

I agree with the OP that it has been equally possible to become overpowered Morrowind and Oblivion as it is in Skyrim. Three wrongs don't make a right and why on earth would people come to the Skyrim forum to complain about games that were released years ago.

Personally, i'm quite happy to ignore overpowered skill and ability combinations but i do like to do everything on one character so i do tend to outlevel the game. A simple option for slower levelling or an even greater difficulty level would be great for me. Sorry if that offends people.

What I meant by that was if they hate the game so much, why do they even bother posting on forums about it? I know the TES community is one of the most unappreciative and ungrateful of them all but they effort people seem to put into bashing a game because it isn't Morrowind 2.0 drives me insane.

It's a little difficult to avoid reading complaints when people seem to feel the need to whine in every possible topic, even when the topic is praising a feature.

No one has been able to refute my point in the OP yet. All games allow you to become overpowered, and relatively easy. Yet no one complains about it in other games.

My only conclusion is that there are different fans then when previous games came out. Upon viewing the join dates of posters complaining about difficulty, most have joined in the last year, while people saying "its a single player rpg, its your choice" are people who have been here for many years, some even 5+ years. This is not always the case obviously as I am new but I have played all games, but generally.

That's not true, you could easily get OP in Morrowind through Alchemy, and if Smithing is considered a Minigame in Skyrim then the Alchemy system in Morrowind should also be considered a minigame as it's practically the same.

Gonna agree. How was it diffrent? It wasn't.

People complained because they abused attributes in the past games and skill and power leveled them. Then they complained about spell creation because spells was overpowered. Guess what you all created the spells and used them. Now we do not have them I say these things add options and allow us to expand on our characters and allow us to farther diversify our builds and it gave us more options to explore it creating more unique individuals.

I am level forty nine I have leveled smithing naturally as I play I never power level. I am also not going to get many perk for the skill set if any. I have my character with enchanting almost maxed and sure I could get a hundred percent spell reduction if I wished but I find it better to spread out the reductions across the spell schools I use. I divide the reductions like this. 50 destruction, 25 illusion, 25 restoration. That is fun for me but I am not trying to have an unbeatable build its a design choice that I chose.

Me too, we needed a retooled attribute system maybe with general perks tied in. Like strength 50 carry 35 extra pounds, intelligence 50 get 7 attribute points to distribute over all if your attributes, willpower 75 get .100% boost to magic regeneration, speed affects how fast you sprint, agility should effect your jumping height and overall stamina, and so on. Then we could still have a perk a system with that. There was really no logical reason for removing attributes, the only reason they remover it is because they did not chose to rebuild the system for it.

i'm 130 hours into my second character, dark elf thief/assassin. Level 41. my smithing is 72, and i've upgraded every single thing i've picked up. my goal was to have a daedric bow and twin enchanted swords. my enchanting is 59. and i've enchanted a bunch of different things. in no way shape or form have i "gimped" myself. it took no overt effort to do this. i didn't have to think about not doing one thing or another. if you are doing it faster, then you have no one to blame but yourself.

There's no need to nerf a single player game. If you feel that something is too powerful and it's taking away from your enjoyment of the game, then stop using it.

Hopefully those at Bethesda are more concerned with game stability over nerfing the game. If I can walk away from the game when I truly feel like there's nothing left for me to see and do, then I don't really care how powerful my character is. If needed, I could have my character just use hand to hand and fight in civilian clothes.

I do miss attributes and having 100 speed, along with maxed athletics. It never got old by simply running past enemies if I didn't feel like fighting them. Sometimes that would lead to me getting guards and other innocents killed if I brought my train past them.

Bingo. This is not WoW - stop farming and grinding then come to the forums to complain about how op you, yes, you, made yourself.

i also personally like the idea of there being options to make god like characters. it gives me a reason to go back. i have like 4 characters in all the TES games, and my last one is always a god, just for the LULZ. never nerf, never remove. all things should be options in the game. people complain, and they take things out of the game cuz it's the cheapest option. not because they are responding to "fan complaints". we need more threads complaining about how much they took away

I question whether or not you even played this game.

Someone doesn't have to use all three skills. Just as in MW and OB you don't use all the skills, that's called being a completionist and not playing your character to their role/class. Now, I have used all three skills. It does make you powerful when you get all three up there. Provided that you start at lvl 1 these skills start at 10 (or 15 to one of them), end at 100 and with 10 increases = 1 level increase, you will level your character to 27.
If you make your gear, then enchant it, and use pots in combat to serve a purpose, your skill with your weapon will still be low, and so will your armor. The game will be easy for you....sorry I said that wrong...the combat will be easy for you (there is more to this game then just the combat) but you won't be godly.

Then there are the perks you have to invest in these skills that could've been invested elsewhere and result in a character just as powerful.

Now, if you enchant alchemy improving gear with max enchants (using the enchant/alchemy loop), then enchant smithing gear and use maxed smithing pots to craft and upgrade and enchant the top gear, then yes you will be godly.

Are the skills the problem individually? Absolutely not.
Are the skills the problem when using all 3 independently? Not really.
Are the skills the problem when you bounce back and forth between them to enhance their effectiveness to the max the game will allow then use them? Yes.

So don't use anything that increases the effectiveness of these three skills.
Anything that I find that is +% to alchemy, enchanting, and smithing either left where I found it are sold.

There were an enormous amount of complaints about that back when Morrowind was new too. That "no one complained" about it is simply just very very wrong.

Do those threads still exist?

No, old inactive threads gets pruned now and then. And Morrowind being almost 10 years old, it happened quite some time ago.

Those kind of post make ne lol at what they did to their own characters.

But then because of those complaints we no longer have attributes which is asinine and also we now no linger have older spell types and spell creation which is a travesty and it has devastated the depth of what the magic system offered in past games.

Morrowind: I need to grind to survive and become OP at high-levels!
Oblivion: I need to grind to survive! (Leveled World)
Skyrim: If I grind I will become OP at middle-levels!

People just need to get used to Skyrim. (IMHO)

You can take Freddo's word for it - he was moderating on these boards way back then

It is fairly easy. Just load your fully tricked out Nerevarine, summon 20 of the strongest monster right beside you using the player.placeatme command. How long did you take to kill them? Can they even take 1% of your health?

Do the same for the COC. Was it two or three spells? 100% weakness to magic and fire in 20ft, then 50 fire damage in 20ft?

Now load your dragonborn and player.placeatme 640b7 20. Or 4430a 20. How long did you take to kill them? Or lord forbid, did you lose? How can you be OP and still lose? You must be bad at skyrim, or maybe the dragonborn wasn't OP at all?

I did find that I was getting too powerful to quick, so I actually scrapped my first character to move at a pace I enjoyed. Role-playing I feel is definitely the best way to get the most out of this game. If you play it just like a game, to become the best, you will and then complain it was too easy. Play the game to enjoy it, not to beat it, as the TES world has so much to offer beyond what people think.