I disagree.

Having to game the system so that it isn't a cakewalk is just as bad as gaming the system so that it is one, and simply reflects on poor design of the system. There is no excuse for poor balance in an open world single player game of all things especially, because the major selling point of the experience is the freedom of choice given to the player.

It's the designers job to make sure that the mechanics reflect the conceptual potential presented, and that the mechanics back those concepts up, so that all choices given to the player are as valid as possible, while trying to maintain internal balance as much as possible.

Your right role-playing still requires rules, and Bethesda applies some of them on you, which is why there are no gravity guns, or maybe how much extra damage a legendary sword does over a fine sword. They have also built the rules of gravity, what ingredients do, they types of weapons and armor available, Bethesda has put in tons of rules... you can't leave Skyrim and just go back home and forget the whole dragon issue can you? So there are rules, where they didn't apply many rules was the skill matix. This allows you to apply your own rules to it, or apply no rules at all it is your choice. I for one established to following rules with each character I create now:

1. I may only pick one crafting skill
2. I pick 5 additional skills
3. These 6 skills are the only ones I am allowed to place perks in, but I can use any of the other skills if I choose or have a need to.
4. Then I apply other role-playing rules for my charachter (like will he have a distrust for magic and not use it, or will he make poisons or just make helpful potions, or maybe he won't use alchemy at all.)

The current build I am playing will not use anything better that a steel weapons and armor (I consider scale and steel plate part of this) as he is a Nord and beleives that Nord Steel is all that you need. I also did not pick smithing as my perk so I will never be an expert in it, I do still use it, and at level 25 I still have the skyforge steel sword the companions gave me and I can upgrade it to superior (smithing is like 35, because I like to make jewlery for some extra cash) I have not enchanted a single item. I do not use enchanted weapons or armor ( as I prefer my trust steel sword and scale armor) Though I have found some enchanted rings and amulets that I will use. Also, he hates the leigon and will attack leigon soldiers on site, I have rescued about 8 stormcloak prisoners so far.

This is the most fun character I have played out so far, it has kept the game challenging, so all it takes is a little self control and some imagination on your part.

skills wont get nerfed because this is a single player game what is the point?

So then challenge isn't necessary? It's perfectly okay for a game to be no challenge at all?

Balance is vital to game design regardless of whether or not anyone else can be affected.

People would not be complaining as much about balance if the game as a whole was not so shallow.Look at Dragon Age Origins you could break the game and pretty much solo it on nightmare with a Arcane warrior or to a lesser extend a rogue archer yet it was still fun and enjoyable because the story,decisions and side characters were not ignored and made up for it.I would not have a problem with being a overpowered god in Skyrim if the meat and potatoes of the game were good.

How would you all feel if the 3rd rank of unrelenting force had a 2 second cooldown? Would you think the devs made a mistake and ask for something more balanced, or would you just drone on about "don't use unrelenting force"?

If god mode was default, would you play Skyrim?

I agree with the OP, the skills are only overpowering if you choose to go down that route.

it's no overpowered skills, combinations of skills are overpowered, some gear are also overpowered the four +damage enchants, you can find +40 in the game, you can craft +48 with maxed alchemy and enchant with all perks.

However skills will not be nerfed as it will ruin the game for the lots of players who are not powergamers, but find that their main skill is nerfed hard.
Its also plenty of work, especially PS3 users might prefer that they fix bugs instead.

The easiest way to adjust difficulty is not to put a lot of point into health, put them in stamina to carry more and magic.

How much health do you who complain that the game is to easy on master have? 200 or 500?

You realize that the simplest way to balance is to cut features, destruction magic was the killer in previous elder scroll games, in Skyrim everybody complain that it's underpowered.
If you played Morrowind or Oblivion you know why.

Now if they cut smithing, enchanting and alchemy the game would be more balanced?
The good news is that it's also simpler to make, everybody win.

Now you could still go everywhere and find good loot at places you know it is. This will let an player who know about the locations to be overpowered. This was an issue in Morrowind, you could get glass armor at level 5 and daeric swords at level 10.

So we could return to Oblivion level scaling, sounds like an good idea, everything is balanced and all enemies is adjusted to your level, everybody wins again.

Do not ask for balancing, you might get that you ask for.

So we shouldn't ask for balance, because clearly Bethesda has no clue how to do it without being lazy and removing things, is that what you are saying? Is that what we should deal with because our big, highly profitable game company is incompetent? Is that it?

Again, some people are missing the point. People want the game to be a challenge no matter which way they play it. They don't want to have to handicap themselves to manufacture a challenge, they want it to be a challenge period.

Let me give a couple examples of what I am talking about, with other games as examples.

There is a difference between a game and a toy. Take a look at one of the most successful games of the past several years, Spore. It sold extremely well for a PC game. But, the fact is - Spore is a really, really crappy game. Take note of what I said - it's a crappy GAME. It's a fantastic toy. The game itself is shallow, largely easy, and would get boring if it weren't for the fact that it tends to change stages fairly quickly. The cell stage is a decent little time-waster, but there are equivalent webgames available on the internet for free. The creature stage is a little interesting but not very much so, and the tribal stage is a snoozefest. The Civilization stage is a very bad ripoff of 4X turn-based strategy games, just in a sort-of RTS mold. The space stage can be interesting for a bit because of the exploration aspect, but it becomes a boring-ass grind after not very long, not to mention the constant fetch missions and "please save our asses from the pirates" missions get very old very quickly.

But as horribly poor a game as Spore is, it's one of the best toys to be developed for the computer in a long time, quite possibly ever. Have you ever seen the stuff that people create with 3D modeling software? Did you ever wish you could create a spaceship or car or tank or plane that looked as cool as what you see in your head? Did you then get your hands on a free piece of modeling software, then toy around with it for a week, then abandon the whole project because "I don't have time to earn a Bachelor's in computer modeling"? Spore is your thing, then. The creature and vehicle creators can be played with by themselves, without messing with the thoroughly underwhelming game. They're simple to use, and yet the more experienced modelers can create some amazing-looking things with some fairly simple tools. It doesn't take years to learn to be a competent modeler with the creators in Spore, it takes maybe weeks to become competent and produce things you enjoy looking at.

Skyrim, however, is not really a toy. As fun as it is to simply run around and look at the environment - I've done it, as has everybody - we want things to do in Skyrim. And the fact is, people want a challenge. You can say "It's single-player, so I think challenge should be optional. Just don't use parts of the game that remove the challenge." Well, that leads me into my next point:

People don't want to have to handicap themselves, and they shouldn't. As I said before, when given the choice of two chess opponents, one who is so far behind your level that you'd have to give up a queen and a bishop to be challenged, and one who plays on your level and provides a challenge without a handicap, which would you choose? You'd choose the player on your level, of course, as would any person actually interested in playing a game. Let's look at another computer game as an example - Supreme Commander 2, which is an excellent RTS game and a sequel to probably the best RTS ever, Supreme Commander. I could sit around playing on the Easy skill level forever, winning constantly. Well, if they had provided only Easy skill level, I'd be pretty annoyed, because I'd have to constantly handicap myself to get a challenge - 3 opponents against me, restricting myself from using nukes or Experimentals, not doing anything for the first minute of the game, or something. And I'd be annoyed with having to handicap myself just to get a challenge, and I'd be right to be annoyed. Fortunately they provided enough skill levels that I can get opponents who are a real challenge without handicapping myself.

This is what some are complaining about with Skyrim - that they have to handicap themselves by restricting themselves from certain parts of the game to get a challenge. There should be nothing in the game that can make the game unchallenging. Nothing at all. As I said, this assumes that you've raised the skill level as far as you can before complaining about being OP. But, if you've genuinely raised the skill level as far as it can go, and you've genuinely found that certain skills or perks, alone or in combination, can STILL make even the hardest skill level too easy and without challenge - then yes, you've got a valid complaint about the game balance, and one that the developers should address and fix.

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In conclusion: The hardest skill level should definitely present a challenge, no matter how you play the game. If it does not, then the developer either needs to rebalance the game or else they need to provide another, even harder skill level.

i don;t disagree I was just stating the mindset of the devs as they have responded with such in the past

Fair enough. Though I honestly find such a mindset incredibly shameful and apathetic for a dev to take.

Did I kill the thread with my TL,DR post?

Surely there's more comment than this.

Well said, there's nothing I can really add to it.

One of my friends, made a stealth assassin character, with the right perks and crafting he could one shot ancient dragons with a backstab. He said he could sneak kill off entire dungeons without getting detected too.

Well, that's the sort of thing I wanna test with my next character. Not the sneak, but the smithing-enchanting combination.

I have to laugh at this statement. I have personally never played WoW itself, but was into the M-U-D games that preceeded it. A bunch of my friends I keep in touch with did WoW for years, sunk $100s$ into it, and 1000s of hours. Balance? Hardly- when every expansion and fix and nerf shifted said balance. I believe one of my pals built over 8 characters- each - was - at its creation time, the most "powerful" build... that is until the next "Balancing" came along, and then something else was the best.

On and on it went, now they all have quit. Point is, you can never achieve balance, true in games and life.

I digress, this isn't very on topic, but this topic never was going anywhere anyways.

@ Grams - master difficulty is SO EASY I can do it in a coma. The build I use is in some other post I did, but any stealth build can accomplish without so much as breaking a sweat (I use no enchant perks, no alchemy perks, only arcame smithing) - Oh and I have 8 free perks at 53... that I don't even know what to spend them on since there isn't a point.
Slaters gonna Slate.

I do not want to take the risk, they have an pretty uneven reputation in fixing problem in games.

Morrowind, main issue was lack of high level content making the game way to easy at higher level, highest level monster was level 20, you could beat it at 15 with decent gear.
Add very unbalanced and all gear hand placed so it was pretty easy to get top gear at low level.

Response Oblivion, everything was level scaled, wolfs mostly disappeared and was replace with lions at higher level, bandits had high end gear at high level , worse bosses continue to get more health at high level while weapon damage was constant at max skill and daeric weapons so they took forever to kill but it was no danger as you had loads of health to.

Skyrim took a step backward to Morrowind system and made a good compromise. However to make better looking and cooler spells the removed spell making, now see how well destruction mages work.
They also did some other idiot decisions like changing the quest journal to a to do list.

I don't think any skills need to be nerfed. If you want to be a BAMF that one shots everything then you can.

game is to easy because u made ur char way to powerful, where does it say i have to make my sword do insane damage and enchant all my boots and rings to make myself pirtty much invincible, if you chose to do this good for you, but dont complain that the game makes it too easy to do so, it was your choice and only you can chose not to make your guy so ridiculous in the first place, i made a char he had a normal sword(daedric), and normal armor no enchantments, he was deadly but not too the point where the game was easy, why?, becuase i made him that way, and enjoyed it, only u have the power to not make such a cheep char, unless you like being a god then do so, thats what this game is all about.

Where were all you people when they told us that spell creation had been axed? Or acrobatics? We could have used the support in those threads back then.