Also, to the tards out there using the term "exploit" or "abusing the system" to describe the act of leveling Smithing, Enchanting, and/or Alchemy and taking the most beneficial perks in the trees - you guys have no clue what the term exploit means.

-Buying ingots to craft is not exploiting
-Waiting until the vendor restocks to buy more ingots is - not exploiting
-Enchanting gear to improve Alchemy and/or Smithing is not exploiting
-Making potions to increase your Enchanting and Smithing is not exploiting
-Improving items via Smithing is not exploiting
-Extra Effect Perk is not exploiting
-Crafting Iron Daggers to raise your Smithing efficiently is not exploiting
-Enchanting a bunch of junk with Banish or Absorb for a huge profit is not exploiting
-Buying Alchemy materials and Daedra hearts is not exploiting
-Crafting the most powerful gear as soon as it is available is not exploiting

Exploiting, kids, would be if you drink Restoration potions to loop your consumables in order to craft items with values that are ridiculous since this is NOT intended by the developers. Abusing the system, would be to loop potions, that is make Fortify Enchant potions and then use that to craft Fortify Alchemy gear over and over. It is intentional it works this way, but doing so abuses the intent of the potion and enchant system.

To say that because people choose to play a certain way, THAT IS NOT EXPLOITING OR ABUSING A SYSTEM, trivializes a game and is their own fault is not only false but stupid. The fact that professions disrupt and adversely affect gameplay so much is a fault of game design - NOT player choices.

Congratulations. You beat the game. There's nothing left.

Pretty much. Progression stops way too soon. The problem I have is that they create this fantastic dynamic system capable of scaling, yet they do not adapt their itemization and character progression to do the same. It is contradictory to how they have designed the rest of the game. It is quite easy to fix this really.

I woiuldn't mind it if i started finding improved armor on bandits at higher levels rather than giving them an obscene amount of hitpoints. By which i mean like upgraded versions of the armor they already have - I don't want to see bandits sporting daedric armor.

Also, Cheating Happens In Multiplayer.

Definition of ACCOMPLISHMENT



1
: the act of http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/accomplishing : http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/completion

2
: something that has been http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/accomplished : http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/achievement

3
a : a quality or ability equipping one for society b : a special skill or ability acquired by training or practice

What do you mean gradually upgrading and improving your gear? Within literally the first hour of playing I went from a Long Bow, first mob I killed outside the Guardian Stones gives me a Hunting bow, I walk into Riften and grab an Orcish bow out of a display case, am sent to White Run and grab an Elven Bow. I spend the next hour with an Elven Bow (I only got to shoot the Orcish, Long Bow, and Hunting Bow maybe 3 times each) then I am put into jail for some quest, break out Forsworn - proceed to kill Forsworn who attack me down the road, bam upgraded to Forsworn Bow. Walked a bit down the road, FTed to Riften to complete a quest, walked outside down a path encountered Ebony Ore just freaking sitting on a ledge and a whole mine full of it and then crafted an Ebony Bow.

That was maybe 3 hours of playing, and I had the second best bow in the game. Oh wait, actually THE BEST bow, because I had enough Ebony and a Daedra Heart that I BOUGHT at an Alchemist to just immediately skip Ebony all the way to Daedric - the best Bow you can have. 3 hours, no possible upgrade for me. That is not a steady progression path. I didn't even try to get loot or look at wikis. Had I of done this, I could have gotten the best bow immediately. Sad.

I don't get any sort of accomplishment feeling coming from loot of bandits. Personally, I like that the bandits commonly have scrub weapons. I find accomplishment in quest lines, collecting items, the console "trophies", housing, skill sets etc. My main character is lvl 35 and about to get my first skill to 100. That is exciting. Exploring a Region until there is nothing left to discover? That will be an accomplishment. Major battles that take two or three attempts to complete? That is rewarding. Finding new ways to exploit the interactions between spells, shouts, powers and other gear? That is a rewarding experience for me.

For instance: This morning, It dawned on me I could use the become ethereal shout to buy time in order to read a powerful scroll, and I then one the battle that until then I had failed three times on....Accomplishment!

Smithing an Ebony bow in the first 3 hours of play must mean that you have grinded iron daggers to get your smithing level to 70. Which to be honest would take the wind right out of your beef.

Crafting Iron Daggers does not take the beef out of my argument. With Warrior Stone active (to level up my Archery initially) leveling Smithing was a joke. You get 10 levels pretty much just doing the quest in Rivervale. Combine that with the fact just being there you have enough materials that you can buy and get it up another 10. Do the same in White Run a few times after returning from quests, then when I went to Riften the the forge at the mine near Riften, and 70 Smithing is not hard to get. I ran into a couple of trainers and that was another free 5 skill points everytime I showed up, and I think I found 2 skill books in that time span. Up until that point however, my gear was all found gear upgraded way too quickly.

It is very easy to increase your smithing but it's just as easy to avoid it. BTW it's Riverwood not Rivervale.....

I should not have to avoid standard features of the game or intentionally hold my progression back. Statements like that, are downright idiotic. Also, sorry Rivervale is EQ - a game that understood the term progression.

I've not had this be the case at all... I still have quite a ways to go. I've accomplished much, but am only level 35. It took me quite a long time to get my smithing to 70 so I could equip myself with glass armor

Stop trying to blame the game for being "unbalanced" when you're deliberately going out of your way to acquire the best stuff in the game. How do you even afford the materials so readily?

Sounds to me like you're getting what you earn.
None of those are exploiting the system when considered on their own (I do all of that during my playthrough), but when you combine all those behaviors - While I wouldn't call it an exploit, it is still going out of your way to acquire the best weapons and armor the game has available. Why are you complaining that you're getting what you obviously want? The problem isn't in the game balance (Otherwise I'd be struggling as well). The problem is that you're mad that you're getting what you asked for.

Considering all the hoops you have to jump through to get this level of power in Skyrim, I'd say it's the most balanced in the series. In Morrowind, all you have to do (If you have Bloodmoon), is train your archery, go grab the Arrows of Slaying, head to Dagon Fel to get Chyrsamere for the best sword in the game, and then kill Divayth Fyr (Or disintigrate his armor, then pickpocket it from him)... BAM - full Daedric and the best sword in the game.

Yeah you don't know what is going on at all. L2P issues really.

Spend cash to make iron daggers and buy soul gems.
Create iron daggers of paralyze 2 seconds.
Sell daggers for over 400 gold each.
Use money to reinvest in materials.
Repeat.

@OP: You obviously didn't play Oblivion.

Arg! Another "Skyrim don't make me feel like the sixiest man alive" thread! Run away!

Where'd you get that Paralyze enchantment? And where are you buying enough Soul Gems?

30 minutes of powerleveling smithing gives you the ability to create better gear than what exists in the entire rest of the game combined. Can you complete every quest in the game in 30 minutes? No? Then it is poor game design.

Equal reward for equal time commitment is good game design. Anything otherwise is trash.

There is no exploit. The fact that you can powerlevel on iron daggers is a case of bad design. If they had tested the game or spent more than a few minutes designing smithing, maybe it wouldn't be an issue.

Yet, it's impossible to power-level smithing in just 30 minutes. Unless you're discounting the amount of time it takes to acquire the materials required.
I powerlevel Iron Daggers whenever I'm in town, yet my smithing only just reached level 70, while I'm level 35. I'm not seeing the "Bad Game Design" - you're going out of your way to break your game.

You would invest in smithing because in a well designed game smithing would be necessary in order to be good enough to beat the long and challenging quest lines that got you the best gear. Smithing would be a tool on the path, not the 30 minute be all end all of the game.

scow2-

i am with carrot on this point: you say he's complaining about the balance and deliberately tries to acquire the best stuff in the game, right?

the answer is an obvious one: OF COURSE!

your argument is telling him to go out of his way to NOT get the best stuff. that's the exact same argument he is making except he is correct because of this fact: it's up to the developers to create a game that is balanced AND give us the option to play it unbalanced. not the other way around.

at the highest difficulty level that the developers set the game should be, um, the most difficult all the way through. and then they give us the option to REDUCE the difficulty. not the other way around.

that's why all these arguments people try and use by saying beth doesn't force us to do anything and that they give us the option to gimp have a FAILING argument.
the game DOES force us to gimp to make it hard. it should ABSOLUTELY be the other way around.

You mean the heavy armor chest piece with a bonus to sneaking on it?

You'd think the makers of the game would know that sneak characters are supposed to wear light armor...

Into the "cool items I'll never use" chest in my house it goes.

To each his own, but as far as itemization goes, I ran out of upgrades at 30. Archery, Sneaking, Smithing were all at 100 before then. Enchanting hit 100 in my 30s and Alchemy hit 100 by 40. Really, past level 25, Perks started to just be overkill.
Deliberately going out of my way to acquire the best gear? Really? Taking an item out of a display case I just happen to come into contact with at the STARTING TOWNS is going out of my way? Besides, THAT IS THE FREAKING POINT OF THE GAME IS PROGRESS. How do I afford the materials? Lol maybe the fact that I can sell back everything I craft for a profit in many cases and that everything I kill drops a ton of loot I can sell? Materials are not expensive and Leather is abundant just by killing animals around the starting town.

The problem is the game balance. I am not going out of my way to do this. There is a big difference between being powerful, and trivializing content. The game is trivialized not due to exploiting or abusing, but that the game is not scaled properly. It scales off of level, which even that does not work well. Also - under no circumstances what I posted is exploiting or abusing by themselves or coupled together. Sorry, it just isn't. Those are STANDARD features. They are imbalanced. I should be able to modify the difficulty to scale properly, not choose either - progress and be come a god and ruin the game, or not progress. The option for players wanting to be overpowered should be there though.


LOL what hoops man? I was just going from town to town and crafted along the way. Most of my tier skipping came from just finding items. Taking Perks, yeah woooo buddy that is jumping through hoops there! Buying materials at a vendor I am already at or using a Skill Trainer - wow really going out of my wayyyy. Giving Skyrim a free pass because it may "work better" than Morrowind, is not cool. They could have rectified this issue entirely, but did not.

The principle of efficiency. The mark of an educated and successful person.

Lol yeah and the fact that the quest to get the armor involved me shooting an arrow through a window at a "champion" sitting down in his chair killing him instantly, or sacrificing a poor helpless NPC who can't fight back? Or "be the last one standing" when the enemies don't even see me and basically fight amongst themselves as I pick them off one by one.