Ah this is the kind of MMO I love to complete;)

It is redundant and more could have been done with it, yes. I'm sure the modding community will jump in here.
Though just because you feel that alchemy doesn't raise fast enough (future solution: mods), doesn't mean cooking as a subset is needed. Especially with the merchants restocking every 24h.

Then you're doing it wrong. I haven't tested it, but apparently there's a way with ore and a spell (don't want to spoil), that nets you (depending on your speechcraft) 190 gold for 10 iron ores. Add enchanting to it and you gain around 100 for each.
I also tried with a char that pushed smithing from the start. I reached lvl 20 and 90 smithing in no time - in fact my combat skills where so low at that time, that I had to restart with a different approach

Enchanting destroys - but only the first time. Once you have that particular spell enchantment, you have it for good. Limited soulgems? Azura. Souls difficult to obtain? Check out conjuration perks.

I don't need exploitation prevention. It's a singleplayer game, the only one I could harm is my own.
And everyone who needs such barriers to counter his own temptation, is dead wrong in a roleplaying game. :)

You forgot one key element: not every potential spouse is interested in YOU. :D

Not much worth it with so many ways to exploit cash.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not claiming everything's golden in Skyrim. But with most if not all "improvements" and "could / should have been dones" that get mentioned, I always wonder - what other games you guys are playing that offers all what is demanded from a TES game?
Not to mention the fact, that there's virtually no other game / series around with such a modding community behind it, where you can claim that you're likely to get it ?

mugshot

It's not just that the skill doesn't increase fast enough, but that it requires grinding rather than increasing at a comparable rate to other skills during normal usage.

Entirely possible.

That's an Adept level Alteration spell called Transmute. Not comparable to easily making hundreds or thousands of gold via Alchemy from the start.

But were you training Smithing in a natural fashion, creating and improving armor for your own use, making extra to sell when you acquired the materials/opportunity, or were you grinding that skill like a cheap hooker? :-P

Either way, that scenario calls back to problems already voiced with the leveling system.

Later level items/perks/etc. Not comparable to easily making hundreds or thousands of gold via Alchemy from the start.

EDIT: Discovered after posting this that Conjuration increases VERY quickly with the use of the spell Bound Sword. The mechanics of Conjuration in Skyrim appear significantly different from previous TES games. SV suggests that summoned creatures increase the Conjuration skill by an amount relative to the amount of damage they deal in combat. I'll leave my original comments below, but bear in mind the above when reading (and see later posts for more information).

Sure, but the suggestions were made in the context of raising the rates of increase for Conjuration, Alchemy, etc so that these skills leveled with normal use rather than grinding, in which case you'd need some sort of limiting factor to avoid getting to skill level 100 in 10 minutes. Not so much exploitation prevention as a balanced system.

You give me one good reason Saadia (Iman) wouldn't want to come home with my character! ;-)

I hear ya, but I feel like the availability of mods has become a cheap excuse for Bethesda not polishing a game before release. A game shouldn't require mods to be good. It should be good out-of-box; the role of mods should be expansion and customization rather than a crutch for a bad game. Bethesda has Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 under its belt, so it's not unreasonable to expect the studio to be capable of delivering a polished open world experience.

Also, mods are only applicable to the PC version, and because of the requirement for Steam, I won't be playing this on PC (unless I pirate a cracked copy).

Anyways, perhaps Skyrim will seem less irksome with time. Haven't put enough time into it to judge the game as a whole yet. Will see what comes with more experience of the game.

Is there any truth to the infinite quest system yet? Ive not really felt it but im only 20 hours in really...

I've never played it (waiting for a year or something until all the patches, DLC, and mods are out) but I assume it works based on templates like "I need you to kill <target> and bring his/her body to <dude> in <some place>".

Like in Daggerfall.

Dunno, but if it's like Fable III's "infinite quests" you'll be sorry if it's there.
I'm waiting to get it until next year sometime as well:)

If you've completed any faction quests, then you've probably completed one of those types of quests. For the Companions, for example, completing a certain number of infinite/random quests is necessary to get the next faction story quest.

To quote myself earlier in this thread:

"Random quests ala Daggerfall are... well, let me just describe one: "Go brawl this guy into submission. Don't ask why, cuz there's no reason, no story. Just travel halfway across the world (or maybe just walk across the street, cuz it's random), beat the guy up, and come back for your prize." The mechanic might have been cool with complex scripting and interesting scenarios, and it might work better with other types of quests, perhaps... But it seems another half-assed implementation in my experiences so far."

I've been told some of the others aren't so bad, but I VERY much despised the brawl quest (especially considering I got randomly sent to Rorikstead while another guy got sent more-or-less across the street).

I have the feeling it will be well worth the wait. This was actually the first Elder Scrolls game I purchased before it even came out. I usually go with the GOTY edition, mainly because I never had a rig that could handle it when it came out.

I have been enjoying it immensely, however, even though I will be spending more money than you in the long run. It pretty much occupied my week.

Yeah, I always spend a bit more on a few games (okay, well probably more than I should on slightly more than a few), but I try and kind of pick my few games yearly that I must have on launch day and pre-order those knowing I'm going to get screwed on DLC in the future (if there's any worth having).

I've actually haven't played a TES game since Daggerfall: Arena (well, I think I had Blood Moon installed once but it managed to crash before I could complete the prologue, consistently, so I gave up on it). In fact I owned TES III and all the expacs (I think). I don't know if I ever bought Oblivion on any platform.

Still, TES V looks fun, it just wasn't anywhere close to beating out Arkham City and my backlog of games that I want to play even more and haven't purchased (waiting on Christmas sales for stuff like Human Revolution). So I figure waiting for a completed edition won't be that bad for this one.

Anyway, offtopic enough I guess, I'll shut up.

Wow, the mage faction questline just handed me a really overpowered item.

What's the item called? (so I can look up the item itself without spoiling the quest)

There's simply no way for Bethesda to tell, how much you or anybody else uses alchemy / blacksmithing / pickpocketing. What you consider to be grinding to get to a specific perk / point, is for others their usual behaviour. You basically call for an adjustment to match specifically your playstyle here.
And yes, that's exactly where mods can come it - it's on a so personal preferences level, that you can't hit the middle ground for all players, ever.

Azura is available from the start, I believe it even starts in the inn next to the mage guild questline - I wouldn't consider that a later level item. Neither would I a 30 skill perk.

Well I don't know how your char looks like or what personality he / she has. If it's anywhere near godspeeed's mugshot though .... ...
Besides that, it's rather easy to see why Saadia can't / won't be a spouse. If not, someone comes up with demands towards Alduin or that bandit X in camp Y.

That's entirely your decision / fault. I didn't wanted GFWL either, still hadn't even considered getting a game for console because of that. Frankly put, you knew what you where up to.

Probably Morokei mask, but you cant look it up without spoiling stuff...
Its not that overpowered, I still get my ass handed while wearing it.

(Or could be another wearable item you get on the very end of the quest,
but I can't even name that without spoiling a lot!

Actually the game balancing and level scaling are getting a little annoying at level 20 and on. Now every bloody meadow is filled with sabretooth tigers, random thieves know devastating battle magicks and wont go down with a sneak attack. All Oblivion and FO3 again..

No, I just call for game design that doesn't require grinding. But I suspect we'll have to agree to disagree on this aspect of the game. ;-)

Well, I don't have it at Lv11. And I find it difficult to accept the rationalization that one should have to know to seek out a specific quest in order to put Enchanting on par with Alchemy.

And about the perk: Are you referring to Soul Stealer? If so, you missed my point: I didn't mean that the Soul Trap effect was difficult to obtain, but rather that the higher level souls required for profitable use of the Enchanting skill are rare and must be obtained by killing powerful creatures (contrasted to the easy and free availability of ingredients that can be used to generate huge amounts of gold from potion-making).

But I haven't given Enchanting much of a go yet, as mentioned, so perhaps it's a bit better than it seems.

*minor, minimal spoiler below*

Why? If she's alive after the quest, I don't see why not. I saved her possibly-very-evil but fine ass, and she's living a life as a serving maid in an inn, so why wouldn't she marry the Dragonborn?

Not an applicable comparison at all (I assume you are referencing Fallout 3). GFWL could be totally ignored. You didn't even have to create a sign-in to install or play.

If you like taking it up the a$$ from Steam, so be it. I don't, and I'm sure of my values on this. Bethesda sold out its PC gamer fans and dealt yet another blow to the DRM-free cause.

But to end on a friendlier note:

The horror! Tho now I'm strangely tempted to try to design a character that resembles... Dammit, see what you've done?!

For a laugh, this link was posted by El_Caz in another thread:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F84oQejFvss

Very funny compilation of Skyrim glitches/bugs and humorous moments, edited well with amusing comments. Actually lol'd watching it. :-)