February 11, 2017 1:46 PM EST
I don't really consider myself to be "casual" but to be honest it's a very broad and subjective term. I usually play on adept but effectively never power game - I don't take more than one crafting tree most of the time, for example, and I've always played with the unofficial patches which fix a lot of more powerful exploits/glitches.
I don't think Skyrim is too easy. Yes, with certain builds/playstyles you can pump up the difficulty and feel immortal. I recently tried an Arcane Archer build which was fun, but ridiculously OP. I was slaughtering the world without taking any damage within the first couple of levels. When I've tried to level cloth-wearing destruction mages though, unless I run like the wind I'll get a giant hammer to the skull and die in one hit. And running like the wind can be tricky in some of these caves! It's the same when you're just starting out on a dagger-sneak character if you picked something that's not a wood elf or khajiit. Your leather wearing gimp arse is going to get handed to you when those plated, waraxe wielding bandits inevitably spot you because you're as stealthy as a drunken horker.
I can certainly see the frustration in the limitations though. What if you WANT to play a sneaky archer AND have a challenge. You want to be rewarded for your good aim and timing, but everything falls flat on its face because that's what sneak arching does. And the same applies to a lot of fun builds - the right combinations just make you a power house. I still don't think that's an issue with the game being too easy though - rather an issue with certain builds not being well balanced, certain styles being too powerful.
I don't think Skyrim is even in the same league as FO4 though. Again it was partly a build thing, but I remember one shotting all the things playing on er... what was the difficulty below survival? Very hard? Anyway, I could comfortably be mowing things down on VH by about level 15-20 regardless of build, unless I'd decided to go all crafting and building with no perception or strength aside from what was needed for crafting perks.
I'm always wary of the issue of hardcore vs casual or hard vs easy because it reminds me of games like WoW, where it seemed a relatively small number of people (if anyone remembers Wrath of the Lich King, it was often people who hadn't finished clearing hard modes and were probably frustrated with their lack of progression in the harder game but bored with the easier game) complained enough for the game to change dramatically and rapidly haemorrhage half its player base (yes, there were probably other factors etc etc).
On the whole Skyrim is flexible enough to create your own challenges, but that might mean playing in styles you really don't enjoy or making characters you can't connect with, which does suck.
Also is this old enough to count as necro?
This post was edited by Vixsyn at February 11, 2017 1:46 PM EST