Thing is... ignoring it means losing content.

I've got the solution!

Let everyone have an iron sword and a flame spouting wizard stick at level 1, and leave it at that....there can then be two levels of difficulty: Kill everything; Get killed by everything.

That's an extreme example of some of the suggestions or discussions on these types of threads. The old argument of "I can do it, therefore I should do it, even though it makes my game too easy for me" isn't a reflection of Bethesda, it's a reflection of the gamer's attitude.

The game forces you to make some sort of decision if you wish to play a certain way? Well, whether you decide to gimp yourself at the character creation level, or the gameplay level, seems to me to be similar.

It sounds, to me, like a lot of people wish for some sort of skill & perk filter, meaning that they wish for the game to limit them. As it stands, the game relies on the player to limit themselves. pragmatically there's not much difference, only the desire and ability for a player to be disciplined that way. As in, do NOT overpower your smithing if you feel it makes you too powerful. As I understand it, you need to make a concerted deliberate effort to overpower your smithing. I cannot see any reason why smithing cannot be done "naturally" i.e. you perform it as & when you naturally find these resources.

If you deliberately go out to find these resources a& then spend a lot of time smithing - well then why be surprised that your character is good at smithing?

Unbelievable.

The OP suggests removing it altogether, which is an even more thorough way of losing content.

I think I get it. Some people want a skills & perks filter created upon character creation. The main idea being - if I can't see it, I can't massively abuse it. They want content removed by the game rather than simply not use it because their character wouldn't use it. Content is content for different characters.

No. That's what Bethesda thinks people want. Look what happened to spellmaking. What people actually want, is for things to be fixed so that they interact with the game in a reasonable manner.

you probably never played a single player open world RPG, you are not supposed to do every single quest with the same char, this game should be completed when you reach lvl 35-40 and started over with another build. clearly if you keep playing to reach lvl 81 you will be overpowered and there's no point in doing so, except for making some "i'm the baws in skyrim" videos on youtube

It's not like I don't want to become powerfull at certain skills and become a powerhouse, I just want it to be hard to obtain without having to force anything on myself. If I can obtain incredible power with a bug or grinding then fine, I don't care, but not at the cost of ignoring perks, skills or playstyles.

I don't want to put effort into making this game more challanging.

Well if that's what Bethesda thinks people want why did they remove it and initiate a different system for Skyrim?

Personally, I believe Bethesda are striving for a system where you just "play" and your character develops according to what you do the most. This system, as evidenced by the massive amount of complaining threads, is confusing a LOT of people who instead wish to be limited by their initial character build decisions. As it stands, you can achive skill in any of the skills, but you are limited in your perks, hence you carve your character as you play.

Some people though, carve themselves an overpowered smith. I think that's fair, presumably they have not achieved excellence in other skills.

I think that they really should have either kept the perk cap at 50, or drastically slowed down level gain by a huge amount and awarded perks every other level. That way, we would spend a lot more time in each level, which would give them more meaning and make it take far more effort to become powerful. The way it is now is just too easy to trivialize the game even by accident.

Well I can only go by how I play, which is to say I play "natural" i.e. I don't grind or overpower. Because of the way I played my most recent character, I achieved a 100 sneak skill. I have not taken all the perks though. As such, I find myself able to use that skill to good effect for most situations, however I currently find myself in an almost hopeless situation where I need to fight off 3 of those massively powerful Draugh overlords (or whatever they're called) and I feel my skills are not balanced that way

So I'm getting my gameplay, I can fend off (or at least circumvent) most enemy with my current playing style, but certainly not all.

Please Bethesda, next game add more bosses and make a number of http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Superboss.
It helps to create a metagame after the MQ is finished. Such a thing would surely help to satisfy a portion of the audience who love metagaming.

I don't think I've played an RPG that doesn't allow the player to become a demi God. People are banging on about this like Beth are the only devs guilty of this. It's just the way this genre goes.

The first Witcher game was about the only game i wasn't running around with uber gear at some point or another.

Again, this is a sandbox RPG. The word sandbox means that the system does not limit yourself neither the char. It just gives you a set of skills, and a world with some things going on (politics, dragonborn, secondary quests...).

In an online game, the game MUST limit stuff and make sure it's all balanced. That's NOT needed on a game designed to play by yourself. If Skyrim was online it would be a complete disaster, simply because everyone would end up having ALL skills and perks, to take all the possible advantage.

So, they would HAVE to set a skill limit and perk limit, and balance skills accordingly.

Have you ever played a mmorpg? If I want to play a warrior, I have to focus on warrior skills if I want it to be a good warrior. If I decide to use some other skill, it will mean I'm lacking something on the warrior side (my choice anyway), and if I decide to use some other skill I will probably have to sacrifice some other warrior skills. This is what balances a game, but this is only needed on online games, where lot of players are going to play together and the system needs to control what the player does. To say it another way, the system enforces the rules.

That's not needed in Skyrim.

Skyrim can't "know" that you are playing a heavy warrior that can't lockpick or sneak. You will be able to use the ability and the game will increase the skill as you do. In an online game this would mean you have less points to invest in your warrior skills so you probably wouldn't use those abilities.

You can do the same in Skyrim, instead of "abusing" the sandbox mode system and complain because your character is powerful.

You mention the use of lockpicking and restoration spells. Well, let me put as example the character I play.

I wanted a sneaky archer (I usually start these games as a melee warrior, so I wanted a change). I wanted it to be good-aligned (not evil), with knowledge on locks and merchandise (speechcraft). I though on making it light-armored.

So, with this choice, I always use bow. I only wear light armour or clothes. I lockpick chests and doors on caves and ruins. I sneak here and there to try surprise my enemies. I never read a single spell book (I didn't choose magic for this char), neither craft a single potion, weapon or armour. Also, I never pickpocket anyone neither steal items, even if they are flagged white. If it's not mine, I don't take it.

I only pick perks from sneaking, archery, lockpicking and merchandise. Light armour barely increased because I don't get hit a lot, but I pick perks there too when I can.

When I create the [censored] warrior I have planed, I won't have problem stealing from shelves if noone is looking, or asking for a reward without shame. I will wear all those armours I can't wear now, and use different weapons I don't use now. I won't use lockpicking neither sneaking, so I will have to approach combat and some situations another way.


It's funny to read comments like: "how am I supposed to not gain sneaking?"... The common answer is "don't use it". The thing also is... why you use it? Because you know you're going to sneak past someone. If you don't want sneaking because it feels powerful or doesn't fit your char... then why you want to sneak past someone?.

Also if you learn a healing spell and use it to heal, even if you're a warrior, you will end up gaining a lot of restoration.. and if you pick perks, you will end up complaining that game is too easy because you can heal with no problems and never die. The question here is not to ask why the game allows that, but why you use it with that character profile.

Pick & choose what you want. Make yourself as powerfull or as vulnerbale as you like, whatever/wherever you find the balance you like.

So... Not picking a perk is work for you? Not placing perk points to advance your character is effort?

Pathetic.

I'm beginning to think that character development is just way too difficult of a task for some of you.

Maybe you should stick to games like Halo, where your character is already made for you and you don't have to expend effort in character development.

I wonder whether people like you are really that purposefully obtuse. It should not take considerable effort and restraint to prevent a game from becoming http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Gamebreaker4_3461.jpg or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA303Ct0MIs.

Because nothing is fun when your character can one hit anything, and just walk through the game.

It seems you totally missed my point and your nerd rage makes me not wanting to explain anything I said.

Perhaps you should stick to playing playground games like tag with other children, then you don't have to expend effort in thinking because you obviously can't do it straight.

The game is balanced. It's not balanced the way you want it to be, but if you force them to change the balance for you, it screws everyone else who thought the balance was fine. That is being selfish.

The only person who limits themselves is you! This is the most absurd thing I've ever heard as far as RPG gaming is concerned, the whole point of leveling up your character is to become stronger than the world around you, not the other way around! What then is the point of getting stronger if you don't want to "One-shot" anything? It would be a lot simpler if you mod your PC as never being able to get stronger because the whole world is 10 levels higher than them...I got an idea, You want to be constantly challenged? Why don't you become a cop, work your way up to detective and get some of these scumbags off the street for us? Or better yet, become a MLA fighter!

Then why not just start the game completely invincible to everything, and kill everything in one hit?

Because that makes for an awful game. You know that thing that's sort of important to games? "game"play? when it's bad, the entire game suffers.

Games are supposed to have challenge, and you should always be rewarded for overcoming that challenge. That does not exist when there is in-game functionality compounded by poor mechanics and balance that reduces the game's difficulty to nil with even the barest flick of your thoughts.

The assumption you're going off is that you KNOW what the "Best" choices for making an optimal build is. Not everyone does. While they might be obvious to you, others may find them jarringly counterintuitive, or too late to fix.

The problem with "Master" difficulty is that it's just the multipliers from Oblivion hidden under a new name.The game breaks easily because no matter how much damage you take or how little damage you deal, you can still compensate. What can the game do to make a character who hits so hard that even 10% of their Damage can take out enemies quickly, and are capable of mitigating almost 90% of the incoming damage?

Bethesda can invest countless resources in additional play testing to account for these problems, but no matter what, they'll never be able to account for how awesome people on the Internet are.