I think the current situation is better. You want to become overpowered? It's possible, go right ahead. You want a balanced game? Possible too. You want to get your [censored] handed to you after every corner you round? Even that is possible. If Bethesda were to limit us, this would pretty much take the first and third possiblity away. Just keep it like this.

Remember you're the "Dragon-Born." You have the blood of a dragon. You aren't supposed to be matched by your enemy

Skyrim is the only RPG I've played where "gimping your own self" was considered normal... the other dozen or simply had devs that knew how to make you progress with the right speed without stripping your freedom... Yeah, I know, it seems impossible for any TES really devoted fan here, but there is such a thing as an RPG that is well-made all-over, not just awesome at certain parts and horrible at others...

I'll admit, I haven't played all the games some peoplke have, but it seems to me that in MOST games, especially RPGs, the game becomes less challenging as you get higher in level. It is that way in most MMORPGs, and in fact, was that way in D&D, though that depended greatly on your DM. It gets more and more difficult to challenge players who's characters have so many different abilities to call on, and are loaded to the gills with magical items.

It's an important part of what makes an RPG successful- the feeling of progression. If you AREN'T gaining power as you level (and thus losiong challenge), then it doesn't feel like your character is progressing. It may say "level 50" next to your character, but if you are dying more frequently than you were when you first started playing the game, you feel LESS powerful, and get discouraged. I think if there really was an RPG where the difficulty increased as you got more powerful, it wouldn't be very popular.

Why is it? People constantly carp about how everything doesn't meet their personal expectations of exactly what they want. What they are given is a system designed to be as flexible as possible so you can use it (and abuse it) in any way you see fit and then they complain it doesn't force everyone to have the specific game they themselves want.
Half the time you see people saying "how can I level up this skill extra fast" and finding exploits to power grind them, the next minute people are whining their character is overpowered.
It's up to you what you do. That's the whole point. None of my characters are overpowered because I choose to neglect certain areas that would overpower them. It's not difficult. It doesn't take a tremendous act of will. It's not like coming off crack or something. Other people seem to enjoy having a god character that one-hits everything. Hell, there was a recent thread where someone threw their toys out their pram because a bandit killed them.

the whole raison d'etre of the game is it gives you something to play with how you want to play with it. Sure, there are highly debatable balancing issues and the damned level scaling, but creating a huge open world game with a highly flexible character system and balancing it all must not be easy. What they do achieve is giving you the option to play it on your own terms. but then it's like people are saying "The game should be geared to ME and what I WANT". The thing Bethesda do really, really well is not forcing you to have a really hard game or a really easy game and letting you define your character on your own terms with minimal restriction. And it does seem people have a problem with being given that freedom and then moaning about the consequences of their ingame character build decisions.

If you find you're overpowered, don't overpower yourself.
If you find you're underpowered, do some grinding or exploit some of those overpowering options.

Nope. They said "the game should be difficult at the highest levels and i should have the option to make it easier. NOT the other way around."

That's exactly what they said. The game currently gets easier the higher level you get, and they feel it should be the other way around.

Name them. I would guess immediately they are much more linear and make choices as to your next destination, quest, ability to refuse action, etc, yes? Please, make a list.

I've asked two or three people do to this in this thread. NO ONE who has said other RPG's are better has bothered to name drop these mythic titles.

No, what you're doing is judging it for what it's not. People enjoy Elder Scrolls specifically because it isn't like all of those other RPGs that you're used to and apparently prefer. You want it to be more like something it has no intention of being and you're judging it negatively because it isn't.

This openess of the Elder Scrolls games(Well, at least since Morrowind, never played the first 2) is both the good and bad of the game. In Morrowind, Oblivion, and now Skyrim, I became way to OP before I even completed a quarter of the game's content, which killed all sense of challenge and ended up ruining the games for me. Once I get a feel for the game, on my subsequent playthoughs I kind of make my own rules and use a series of mods to keep the game fun but challenging. Like for Skyrim, I stopped using the stones that speed leveling, installed a mod that slows down leveling further, and I'm not maxing out my smithing or enchanting until much later in the game. I'm level 27 now on my Khajit and I'm fairly powerful, but not wtfpwning everything I see... however, that brings me to an extra issue I do have with Skyrim.

The enemy balancing is so screwed up, half the enemies I can kill in 2 hits, and they can't do jack all to me, but then you get that 1 enemy that can 1 shot you. Yes, I can understand the 'Boss' of a dungeon should be much stronger than the rest, but it's really not very fun to just blindly and lazily slashing your way through an entire dungeon, only to be 1 or 2 shotted by a single guy at the end. Do you keep your gear appropriate to the lower to mid level enemies, so you still have a challenge when going through a dungeon, only to get your ass stomped by one guy at the end? Or do you gear up and buff yourself to the point where you can go toe to toe with the last dude, but find out your so OP to everyone else that most of the game is just a lazy walk in the park?

It's reasons like this why I'd never buy an Elder Scrolls game on a console as long as I have a PC capable of running it. Construction Kit + Awesome Mod Community fixes this [censored] right up.

To expand, this complaint seems like it would be akin to me playing Mass Effect and complaining that I can't just shoot Saren in the face in the beginning of the game since I know he's the bad guy. That sort of thing just isn't within the game's scope. Similarly, Elder Scrolls isn't a series were you're "locked off" from huge portions of the game until you progress through the story or reach a certain level. If you know where to find Ebon Ingots and Daedra Hearts ahead of time and want to make a suit of Daedric armor 2 hours into the game then all the power to you.

You want me to list all the reasons? I'll be here all day, the list is huge. Well here's one that happened earlier today, I fast traveled to a farm outside of whiterun, triggering 4th level vampism accidentally. In the middle of the day. What appened? Nothing. In Oblivion or Morrowind, I would be dead. How has vampirism not been simplified to cater for all the crap players who lack the common sense to figure out the reason why their character always died when fast travelling or waiting? Jesus, even the menu has been simplified, because players were complaining that it was 'difficult to use' Like [censored] it was 'difficult' to use, the journal was great! Why fix what is'nt broken? Because then Beth would'nt get all the money from all the kids who have never toutched a TES game in their life and would'nt have bought Skyrim if it had'nt been 'easier to understand'. You do know Todd himself said that Skyrim was'nt appealing to the casual gamer, and that he aimed to fix that by simplifying aspects of the game.

Solution? From now on, buy the pc version and await the ck. Mod your game - profit!? Hell, you don't even have to wait for the ck, there are already many mods that deal with your issue now!

That's it?

That's all you've got?

Here's my response to you: They took active status off the display, burying it in the magic menu. When they chose to do that, they balanced with not killing you without giving you warning. It would be incredibly unfair for someone to fast travel without knowing they have a fatal disease, considering when you fast travel, the game automatically autosaves, thus saving you dead.

You think that over the past two hundred years since Oblivion came out that perhaps vamipirism hasn't evolved? It's a disease, which as we've seen with many strains of flu virus, can learn and adapt.

Anything else? I'm just ignoring the rest of your rant, as it's barely coherent and isn't worthy of a response.

Risen and the Gothic series (apart from the fourth) come to mind. Not perfect examples, but still...

This is a by-product of a classless system. "Other" games restrict your choices, this one lets you make any type of character you can envision (mostly). So since "other" games gimp you before you make the character by restricing your choices, I and many others see Skyrim as a step forward. If freedom of choice so overwhelms your idea of character concept than this may not be the game for you.

innovation, advancement, creativity, etc. is what i look for in games.

the fact that past games also have high difficulty issues does not matter.

the problem i have with skyrim is that it doesn't even seem to have been a topic they discussed or attempted to improve. and, they could have easily implemented some of them.

for example: the optional slider bar would have been beyond great in this game and is just one easy way to make it harder. it's a crude method, but, who cares. and, how hard is it to come up with some new, high level enemies that only appear at certain character levels?

akesh- NO PC here. maybe, but, not until i get some extra cash and have an xbox CONTROLLER to use.

You know, if all the wiki's of the web had no information, the library was taken down, no guides were made of any kind...

This conversation would not be happening. Its part of the reason I hold off as long as I can before I look up a single thing about a game. Developers simply have thier hands tied in many regards because gamers refuse for anything to be a damned mystery.

You made your bed now lie in it.

Simple != dumb.

Yes, I understand this point. Sure Beth could do a better job with some scaling issues. But it's not a game breaking problem, and it's easy to fix yourself, so complaining about it vehemently sounds whiny.

"Zomg this GUM is so BROKEN it's lost its FLAVOR after I've been CHEWING it for a long time!!!!!! Why don't they fix it, I paid money for this?!?!"

I'm tired of this 'dumbed down' and 'simplifying the game' argument.

"They took out spellmaking"- yep, they sure did. Didn't that just make the game...more challenging? Now you can't make overpowered spells. You have to work within the limitations of the current spell system. More challenge! Next?

"They took out levitation"- gee, doesn't my answer above fit really well here too?

"They took out pieces of armor"- thus limiting overpowered enchantments. You know...I'm starting to see a trend here...

Almost everything they removed actually added to the difficulty of the game. It gave us less choices, and less roleplay options, I know. But for those who are sitting in here complaining about how Skyrim is LESS challenging than the previous entries, which had so many more options to become overpowered, it's really an interesting argument, isn't it?

VERY good point and another shout out where modding the game would be concerned.

Thats the great thing about opinions!

See, cause I thought the locked-in style of 'class' selection at the beginning of the game was a pain. Now, guess what? You can create your own dynamic archetype or sub-archetype.

Dual-wielding? Sure seems like an improvement to me.

Physics? Definitely looks better to me.

Game just feels better to me, seems like an overall improvement. I played the Kingdoms of Amalur demo a minute ago, and came running back to Skyrim.

Well what I get from that is...

The game at high levels, highest difficulty with no perks should be very hard. Perks are supposed to make the game easier.

The way it is now though you have to AVOID perks to make the game harder. He, as I see it anyway, is saying the game is already easy at high levels and perks just make things worse. In the end if you find it too easy you have to leave out a lot of skills and perks to have a hard time. I, along with many others, don't feel it should be that way. You should have to take perks and use all your skills to make the game easier.

Honestly, I think one mistake Beth made was displaying the level as a number at all. I think it confuses people into wanting to max it or having expectations. Clearly the game is trying to focus on your individual skill levels, and the overall level is distracting to some. it might be better if the char level was just a technical info buried in the journal.