I always thought of the elderscrolls games as games that truly let you become a character that you fully create and is your own infividual creation. It's part of the magic of the game. However, recently I've come across character building guides on YouTube created by this one player for a assassin. I like the build he had, and he posted many videos laying out how he speed out his character. I wanted to build the exact same thing because it looked good, but I'm afraid that all I'm doing is just creating HIS character, not mine. Of course, there's obviously alot of perks I would need to do anyway that this guy had, but I really wonder if it's a big deal using creation guides like this and is it then not MY character? Anyway, opinons on this would be great.

The combat in these games is so borderline average that using character builds really does nothing to ruin my enjoyment of the game. I don't enjoy thinking too deeply about the combat and how my character will perform, it's such a shallow combat system that it really doesn't matter, without mods magic has horrible scaling too. (maybe they fixed that now, though)

I think the exploration and seeing 'landmarks' is what makes the game good, everything about the combat is very so-so and to me takes a backseat to just about everything else.

I never understood character builds either. It's not like the combat is particularly challenging. Why not just play the character you want to play :/

I didn't even know they existed, beyond the one dealing with hand-to-hand combat (which is almost a necessity to make that fighting style viable in Skyrim).

I guess going with a guide might be something you'd do if you were playing it on the hardest difficulty, but in these sorts of games I don't find the enjoyment in the difficulty of it; I just want to explore and experience a fantasy world. I played a mage, and never had any problems with the strategy of "blast those fools." I had my own strategy of putting everything into more mana and killing things before they could kill me.