I think we can all agree Oblivion may have had some issues with leveling problems. Certainly from my perspective I found myself either having to slide the difficulty bar down by a fair margin just to be able to deal with some of the higher tiers of enemies, or (like many), I would just simply not sleep/work only on my minor skills. As such my level 2 expert archer would breeze through any and all encounters he might face. For me, that was an issue I had with Oblivion, that in order to cope with the game, I had to exploit it or take the soft option and dive for cover in the options menu by lowering the challenge level. This time I'm determined to do neither, but I'm wondering what you guys think. Did you use the slider in oblivion? if it gets too tough will you use it in skyrim?

Let's hope not. We'll see, it depends on how well balanced it is from the get-go. If it's too hard then I'll adjust some stuff, if it's too easy then I might up the difficulty rather than sliders. (Presuming thats possible).

I'll probably keep it on normal, I remember really having trouble with Oblivion when I started. I found it so hard but hopefully Skyrim will be better now that it has a normal leveling system.

I never missed a chance to level up and did 60% of the games side-quests before stepping into my first Oblivion gate. I definitely turned the slider down in there.

Maybe.  In most RPGs I find that it takes me a decent chunk of time to get the hang of the combat, spell and skills.  I sometimes level up abilities that I think will be useful, but wind up regretting their purchase later.  When I played DA:O for the first time, there were some points in the game where I dropped the difficulty down.  In later play-throughs, I didn't have to do that because I knew by then what I was doing.  I have no problem readjusting difficulties during my initial play-through of a game.   I often will replay good RPGs that allow me to change my character anyway.

Depends, if it has balance issues like Oblivion did I'll probably turn the difficulty down a tad, if not will most likely leave it as it is. There is nothing more demotivating than levelling up only to get murdered by a wolf.

I'm sort of hoping for a complete overhaul of the character/leveling system so that wouldn't be an issue to begin with. Keeping a pen and paper handy for record keeping on what stats I've raised and when I can level up is the opposite of fun and I can't not play that way.

If the same level scaling system is used, fuck yeah I'll use it, I'll slide that bitch way to the left.

We'll need to see how they balance everything this time around. Last time I used it to lower the difficulty of later Oblivion gates, and maybe to increase my other skills with a certain Imp....

Ill follow my rule of bumping it up each time I play a new character.

There's no difficulty slider in Skyrim, they've changed to easy, medium and hard like in Fallout 3. Dunno if very easy and very hard are also in Skyrim

Considering that they removed the difficulty slider, no, I will not be using it.

I think that I was one of the few people who realized that min maxing the the character would lead to folly. I designed my character from the outset to be able to switch playing styles on the fly. The result was that by level 25 my character had maximized his sword skills and most of his magic skills. I actually had to turn the slider up cause the game got too easy for me. I forget the name of the sword but I had the flaming sword from that tournament of 10 races and my character learned to paralyze on touch. Combined with the fact that I had the maximum life detect spell and the ability to turn invisible no enemy stood a chance against him. For me I guess I just planned ahead better so Oblivion got easier as my level went up.

Weird, i never had any trouble in Oblivion difficulty wise and by the end of the game i was ratcheting it up.

First prob 20 lvls no after I hit 20 I will turn it up.

I never leveled up in oblivion, so I had maxed out all my skills and had the best low level gear, I rarely ran into big issues.

I would be surprised if they use a slider in Skyrim in place of just regular difficulty settings like Fallout 3 had.  Anyway, no, I'll be keeping it smack-dab on normal, probably.   It's not going to be an issue in Skyrim, anyway, because it doesn't have the contrived leveling system of Oblivion and Morrowind.
 
Though leveling only your minor skills so you don't level up is a bad idea in Oblivion because you need those to pump up your attributes when you do level up, which means you move faster, carry more, do more damage with bows and melee weapons, have more magicka, regenerate magicka faster, etc.  I simply power leveled such that I got three +5 modifiers to attributes at every level up and eventually had them all at 100 except for luck.

I'm going to turn that bad boy all the way down.

I'm going to try it on normal, and if the game kicks my ass then I'll crank it down. 
 
I'll also keep about five different saves so I don't get stuck somewhere that I can't get out of. And to avoid bugs.

when i played oblivion, i totally screwed up and leveled my character in a dumb way, so i had to play with the slider down near the bottom for most of the game. my hope is that it's not as easy to screw your character up this time.

I never had a problem with the slider, but it did get annoying when you got to level 20 and enemies became stab sponges, arrow sponges, etc.

I play RPGs for a false sense of satisfaction coupled with (typically) well-crafted stories within a (typically) well-realized world. Combat the least important part of an RPG for me, and 'difficult combat' ranks even lower. If I'm breaking a sweat, I'll turn it down.

Although, I hope Skyrim takes on New Vegas' static difficulty rankings (easy, normal, hard).

Once I start steamrolling enemies at a higher level I'll crank it up.

Probably not. 

Depends on how well the game is balanced.  If I'm going to enjoy the game more by altering the difficulty in one way or the other, then I will do so.

Sliders always seemed like a gimmick to me.  Like, I think that the amount of food is less than an equivalently priced sandwich, but the fact there are multiple sandwiches make you feel like you're getting a deal. 

I'm going to try it on normal, and if the game kicks my ass then I'll crank it down.  I'll also keep about five different saves so I don't get stuck somewhere that I can't get out of. And to avoid bugs.

I never used it and hopefully I won't have to do it this time either. They have said they are changing the leveling to be more like Fallout 3. I thought Fallout 3 did a good job about keeping the enemies manageable so I'm sure I will like Skyrim's as well.

I'll definitely keep it at normal, the balance that Bethesda recommends. At least for the first playthrough. I keep about 25 saves per character, so if I get killed, I'll reload and try a different strategy. That's the nice thing about mages -- strategy options.

Ehh, my first run through Oblivion I had quite easy, just for one hits with my bow... 
I'd really like it so enemies AND you took a lot less damage, but I doubt it'll happen, so I think I'll just leave it on normal. (Especially considering the archery improvements)  
I'm not using an archery character actually, so I'll have it quite hard, so I'm forced to block and try to approach things with -some- tactics.