Start again, and don't level sneak and smithing.

You are only hurting yourself, and being a pain on the forums by coming in and saying "I don't enjoy my game and I did this which made it too easy"...you are only being apologists for your own behaviour, and trying to blame the game developers for your actions.

Huh? It is the developer's job to maintain as best they can the level of difficulty that I set in options. If one or two skills in the game completely remove the game's difficulty, then the devs did not do their jobs properly. Telling me to not level sneak and smithing is absolutely ridiculous. Why, so a few bad gamers can feel overpowered one-shotting NPCs? Well, they can play on novice, but I can't go any higher than master difficulty.

Yeah... lol I think your the one that dosent get it.

Thats what the difficulty setting is for... and the way all bethesda games have worked.... you turn up the difficulty settings as you progress.

Otherwise all chalenge is lost... from Oblivion to Fallout N.V.... it's theyre standard game design...

What you describe is just some internal strugle that YOU experiance as a result of YOUR chosen perspective... as a result of the choice and gameplay control that Bethesda has given the player.

Ahhhh.... I see now YOUR starting to get it.

Theres no doubt that I take issue with the level of difficulty and depth of skill mechanics of the game as a whole... but these are not a result of the skills being over powered but rather a desighn choice by Beth to make the game less daunting for a general audiance.

Challenging stealth games exist. Stealth can be a lot of fun, as a play style. I'd prefer a game that handles it well to one that doesn't.

Still, I guess I'll take a game that's otherwise very good but poorly balanced (Skyrim) over one that's otherwise fairly bad but challenging and well balanced (Dragon Age 2) especially when the devs provide me the tools to fix balance myself. It's a lot less work to balance Skyrim than it would be to add more varied environments to DA2.

@Asgard:

You asked the question, I gave you the answer....don't claim I'm being ridiculous just because you have no self-control, and have an arrogant attitude to your playing style.

If you don't like the obvious answer, don't ask the question.

So... now you're telling him he should just never pick Sneak or Smithing...

Instead of actually balancing the mechanics...

Okay...

No self-control? Look at my sig. I'm playing an archer that only uses long bows, iron arrows, and hide armor. He uses smithing to upgrade his long bow, but as it's not covered by perks, it's a small upgrade, so the game is balanced. However, I couldn't figure out a way to gimp sneak. So I'll never be able to enjoy this skill which is a part of the game. This is a failure on the devs' part. ALL skills should be enjoyable and respect the difficulty that you set in options. This is OBVIOUS.

What'er you talkin about a smithed up long bow is bad ass... fastest firing bow in the game right?

Wut?

Seriously... wut?

This is not a result of the skills being over powered but rather a design choice.

A design choice.

The choice made by the designers.

The ones in control of the variables of the mechanics.

The variables that which are set to be a certain value based on balancing.

A variable that, if set at 4 would be too weak, set at 5 would be too strong, so having it set at 4.5 would be perfect.

But a variable that was decided on, by the developer, to be set at 5 so more people could play the game.

5 being over powered in the balance design Bethesda created.

So... it's not a case of the mechanics being over powered it's a case of the mechanics being over powered?

You people crack me up...

You come on the forums bleating that you have OP'd your character, then refuse to accept that you knowingly did that yourselves...Vicarious Liability folks. It means you hold a level of responsibility for your own actions.

I would suggest that the vast majority of players have no issue with the game, and that 'balance' is relative. If you choose to take an extreme path, then you will get extreme results...if you don't like those results, you have no one to blame but yourselves.

Again, I will state the obvious: If you don't like the answer, don't ask the question.

Please learn something about game design and balance.

I choose to collect the Star Man in Super Mario Bros, giving me the ability to ran faster and touch enemies without dying. It's my own damn fault for collecting it and killing enemies with it.

Except, here's where balance and gameplay comes in:

I collected an item that makes me very powerful.

Except it is temporary.

And I can still fall into a pit and die.

That's what we call balance.

In Skyrim... achieving, i.e. "collecting," Smithing, Alchemy, Enchanting, or any other highly/overly powerful item/build has no such balancing against it.

How is taking sneak, which will break any archer or one-handed character an extreme path? I have overpowered my character by taking a skill which is part of the game? What?

Don't you get it? The problem isn't that we're overpowering ourselves, the problem is that we're breaking the game WITHOUT EVEN TRYING, just playing the game normally.

Anyway, I'm wasting my time because beth has stated they will do balance tweaks. Live with it. And play on novice if you want to one-shot NPCs.

I see where your having difficulty... your thinking game mechanics and skills are one in the same... having the same definition.

The term game mechanics in the video game industry include a broad range of aspects... not just the skills in an rpg.

All video games from Super Mario brothers to Skyrim have " game mechanics "

So see there..you learned somthing.

The general difficulty on the standard setting in skyrim offers no real chalenge from the begining.... which was a decision that Beth made in an effort not to alienate players this time around.... ok... heres where we go back to my previous post.... presuming that your following... this general lack of difficulty carries all the way through the game... regardless of skills and perks... it was like I said a design choice.... not on I particularly like, but thats kind of the founding philosaphy behind the game.

I don't need to learn anything about game design and balance, I'm happy with the game balance as it is, and I don't need to anolyse the game because I am a player, not a developer. And I don't have an OP character, apparently.

Secondly, although it's prettty irrelevant, I'm a long-term in-house beta tester for another game company, and have been involved in half a dozen intensive balancing projects over the last few years, as well as post-release and patch-issue balancing tasks. That has taught me one thing, and that is that you can't stop some people from pushing the balance boundaries...but again, that's their own issue, not the developers. So long as the product is balanced and workable for the vast majority of gamers it is acceptable, the very few who can't help themselves to push the extreme can't be catered for without harming the others, in many cases.

Yeah...

You do realize you're talking to a game designer right now, right, and you couldn't sound any more ignorant of the subject than you already do, right?

A Skill, i.e. Smithing, is a game mechanic.

Do you even know what a game mechanic and a design decision are?

Bethesda chose to make the game easy.

They did this by making Skills, i.e. mechanics in the game or... game mechanics, extremely powerful in some cases.

Aka... the Skills (aka mechanics) were designed to be overly powerful on purpose... aka a design decision.

BS. Big BS. You have the choice already. No one makes you do anything in this game but YOU. You want to break it, break it. You don't have to craft. You don't need to take companions. Play on MASTER. ETC. It's you who breaks it. Learn self control.

double post - delete or ignore...

Um... yes you can.

League of Legends and Street Fighter are perfect examples.

League of Legends players found a way to make Stealth characters extremely powerful by stacking a certain item that did AoE passive damage, which lead players to constantly picking said Stealth characters and said item multiple times.

How did Riot fix this?

By making the item's passive AoE damage UNIQUE and thus no longer stackable.

Thus, they fixed the balance mistake they themselves made.

I was a tester as well.

Although... my job as a tester was to point out these balance issues so that they could... y'know... be potentially fixed.

One thing is for certain, I would suggest, and that is that the base mechanics will not be altered.

In my experience with Beth, patches fix the window dressing, the cosmetics of the game, quest bugs and mechanics glitches...they don't change the way the game functions, or how the actual mechanics of the game work.

Skills wont get nerfed because theyre finished developing the game. All theyre focusing on now is fixes and DLC, not game balance.

This is not a multiplayer game.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you on this.

I take the game the way it is, and I'm playing four characters, all different types. Two take smithing, all four take enchanting - and not power-leveled either.

Also, one persons overpowered abilities are another persons balanced gameplay mechanics.

We're all different - to a certain extend - and this holds true in gameplay, as well. We see this by players saying Master level is easy; and some others are playing at lower levels and having problems. So, why should the player having problems at the lower level not use certain game-mechanics to increase his character's abilities, and thereby enjoying the game. Instead of slogging on as he is now and calling it quits after one or two months. I can understand this much more easily than the player who power-levels alchemy, smithing, and enchanting, finishes the game in 4 weeks, and then complains that Bethesda put "exploits" in the game. (exploits - a word often used wrongly in the forums - IMO.)

As far as I'm concerned, you do what you have to do, to enjoy playing this game - and if you have to power-level certain skills, so be it.

It's one thing when you can break the game with a constant effect restore health 50 ring, or a sword with cast on self invis. Then ok just don't use those particular enchantments, there's plenty more that won't break the game and still let you level enchanting. It's another thing entirely to say don't use an entire skill because it's gamebreaking.

@Eagle15:

Word.

Totally spot on. It would appear from this thread, and others, that's it's generally only a very few who are having issues with the 'game is OP' or 'game is too easy' things. And when those folk pop up and declare that they are game designers and developers, well that pretty much explains the problem in my mind...perhaps a case of too much anolysis, and less playing for fun is the problem.

This.

I mean... imagine if damage was done per localized body part, i.e. head and body shots would do the most damage thus making combat easier.

The moment you say "well... don't shoot/hit them in the head or body" is the moment you sound like you shouldn't even be discussing the topic. If a basic skill breaks the game... there's something wrong there.


Probably the most idiotic thing I've ever heard.

So now... I have to limit myself to have fun? I thought having fun was being allowed to do what I want? And if I'm having fun I can't also be challenged? I have to pick one or the other?

And you work in the game industry...

There are lower difficulty settings for a reason. That's not to say that the base game on normal should be impossible for some people, but it should still be challenging without having to impose self restrictions due to ineptitude when it comes to design of the way things work. However I believe good design would allow both concepts to work to a more fair middle ground instead of such polarizing extremes.