I hope I'm not rekindling a flame by saying this, because I haven't seen threads about it as much lately.
Maybe it has already been said before.

About the people complaining that this game is too easy, and that you have to actively 'gimp' yourself to have any fun. Why would someone intentionally use an exploit to become
super-powerful, and then whine "i r too powerful :'( " right afterwards. I'll admit, to make the game experience more fun and the characters I make more diverse, I'll put my own gameplay
limits on my characters, but I still find some battles challenging and strategic in their own way.

I guess TES has always had ways to cheat the system, but you know what it also has? Console commands. Why not just manually type these in and save all the troubles of an exploit that you know is such.
Like those that smack around Ralof while escaping Helgen, I admit to spamming abilities every now and then, but at some points it can be absurd.

It shipped with the game too, and its just as game-breaking, it basically the same thing. No one is obligated to use the console, the enchant/smithing/alchemy synergy, or even fast travel.

Of course, if you want to use these that is within your rights, but why complain about it?

I hope this doesn't come off as confrontational, just my observations. If it does, well

The console is not available on console, just sayin'

The console is obviously not a "part of the game", and using the console is more explicitly cheating. If someone tgm's and then goes around complaining about how easy the game is, then they're stupid. But no one does that.

I think the issue stems from the definition of "exploit". If an exploit was put into the game by design, then that's bad game design (and, like you mentioned, it's stupid to intentionally put exploits in the game, because if people want to be really bad ass, then there's the console for that). If the exploits were not explicitly put into the game, then Beth just overlooked stuff and/or didn't spend enough time looking over/testing the mechanics of the game. That's sloppy craftsmanship. Either way I see it as a mistake on Beth's part.

Something else to think about when deciding what's an exploit and what isn't is what it's like to not use the exploit. If you see a guard that's just continually walking into a wall and spam train sneak on them, that's more obviously an exploit, because training sneak "normally" by like, actually using the skill and sneaking around, doesn't feel ridiculous. It feels right. When it comes to something like iron dagger smithing spamming, though, not making iron daggers feels kind of ridiculous. When I was leveling smithing and got to like, steel armor, I tried spending money and resources to make steel armor. But then I realized that making iron daggers levels smithing just as much. It feels ridiculous to use up more resources on making steel armor when you could spend fewer resources and make iron daggers, and get the same benefit. It makes my character feel like an idiot and forces me to come up with roleplaying excuses as to why I'm not going to do the obviously more natural thing to do.

edit: and note that in both cases it's still really Beth's fault. It's Beth's fault for making faulty guard AI. The fact that I can overlook it or avoid its implications doesn't magically make it no longer faulty. If the dagger issue was there by design, Beth should have designed it better (it seems natural that making more advanced armor would train your smithing more -- it also makes sense to have game mechanics that make sense and make the game challenging/fun). If the dagger issues was oversight -- then it was oversight, Beth should fix it.

Point taken.


I can see that. I think it has a lot to do with player responsibility. I think in big games like these opportunities will arise to cheat the system's mechanics. One has to audit themselves for their own enjoyment. Creating god characters can be fun and empowering, but this game wasn't designed to be a challenge for that synergistic mix of crafting. I thought the same with the iron daggers, that should have scaled the growth based on what you built. As you said, both from a realistic and RP perspective, crafting anything else to train seems silly.

Well, firstly, "exploits" shouldn't exist, or be minimised as much as possible, so that trying to find the best strategies and combinations for your character is a fun and interesting challenge. Secondly, it isn't so much intentionally using an exploit as simply not avoiding exploits hard enough. To not use exploits, you DO have to intentionally gimp your character, because there are so many exploits, and the only challenge in the game actually becomes avoiding trying to be good at things, which is just annoying as hell. If I am trying to make my character as powerful as possible, and I become pretty powerful but have to keep working at it, that is fun. If I have to try and weaken my character, I am not getting any sense of progression because there is no need for it, I just do things as they come and avoid doing some things which are better for me. If I try to make my character powerful, and with hardly any effort become a god, that is fun for about 5 seconds and then it's no longer fun.

I don't really have an issue with becoming a God, I have an issue with becoming a God easily. If people want to become God-like easily then they have the console. Barring the console though, my opinion is that the game mechanics should make sense and make the game challenging.

The idea of "player responsibility" is, imo, pretty silly. Again, I point you to paragraph 2 of my original response. I need to be "responsible" because of the existence of exploits of some form or another. Do these exploits exist by design? That's stupid. Were they overlooked? That's careless. I could potentially excuse certain exploits that exist because it's just too hard to modify game mechanics to avoid them, but this doesn't seem to be the case with most of my complaints. The issue with smithing, for example, could be fixed relatively simply by having the increase to skill from crafting scale with the quality of the material, and possibly also by having vendors not sell (as much) ore, or something like that.