I'd argue that it's better to make an easy game and let modders make it harder. The people who want a hard game know where to find their mods. You also have the advantage of letting everyone mod it to their taste with whatever particular set of challenges they want. If you keep making things harder to appease the people who want a harder game you're eventually going to start suffering from fighting game syndrome.
I didn't mean making the game virtually impossible to play, just seemingly more difficult than Oblivion was.
It never made sense to me how you would come right out of a prison with a map and compass in hand. It'd make more sense to have to buy either, or have them granted to you at a certain point.
At least if you have to buy it, you'd have the option of whether or not to be an "explorer" as opposed to "here's a map now run to (X,Y) for goblins and loot."
But really, mods
shouldn't be made to make something harder. Never said they aren't. :\