Not true at all on anything above Adept difficulty. Shadow Warrior is also the only thing that is imbalanced combined with Archery. That's why I do not pick it up.


Utterly false. You do not get "ultimate protection", you get "base protection". You will not have a high AR because your skill will be low, so you will still be getting hit by a truck when you are hit.


Mostly true, except that it starts to falter well before level 35, especially on anything higher than Adept and especially compared to any other damage source.


A lot of misinformation on this. Conjured weapons do not "scale" any differently than a real weapon. Your Conjuration skill has 0 effect on it's damage. People need to stop saying this without actually checking for facts first. 1-100 Conjuration and your bound weapons are identical. Only your skill and perks for those weapons raises the damage.


Utterly false. Conjured weapons equal Skyforge steel without the perk. You can get Skyforge weapons extremely early in the game. With the perk they equal unupgraded Ebony gear. They are not Daedric and they cannot be upgraded or Enchanted. They start out extremely powerful, but then start losing ground to items that can be found around level 30, and they especially lose to non enchanted smithed gear. Bound weapons are fine as they are.




A once a day racial is not "overpowered". It's also the only reason to pick an Orc. Breton has a natural 25% resist and High Elf +50 mana, BOTH of which are far superior to an Orc in everything but dragon/boss killing.


This is why the magic system was gutted. Can't ruin shouts without fixing magic first. The only shout that is truly "too strong" anyway is Elemental Fury. There's little reason to use anything else with most builds.


Of course something > nothing, but that mod is nowhere even remotely close to the ballpark for what needs to be done. I also believe this mod is superior:

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1245

Still just a bandaid on a gaping wound however.


Both physical and elemental reduction is capped at 80% - 85%. Anything over 580 or so AR does absolutely nothing.

Note: I always play on Master difficulty. In fact I started using this mod because I find the game too easy on replays even without touching Smithing/Enchanting/Alchemy until much later levels -- http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1269

Remember:
- Balance is as much about perception as it is about math.

- Many of these balance changes are suppose to come as a *set*. Attempting ideal balance (which is not realistic) isn't about simple "nerfing" or "buffing" one single thing, it's about changing a whole bunch of things that you can mix-and-match based on personal preference.

The way I want balance is as a set of mods that are meant work together, not as one big borg mod that tries to create someone's perfect vision of balance.

To me, balance is all about making MORE playstyles effective WITHOUT eliminating others. Min/maxing should still be beneficial, just not ludacriously so. And just in case balancing one thing destroys another, the balance mods should be have the option of both small pieces and one big merged mod.

The point is mostly the poor AI, especially pathfinding AI, which adds to how easy it is to kite. Either that needs to be improved or bows need to be reduced in effectiveness at lower levels (<35 or so). Starting as early as level 5 or so I can kite down a Giant. Of course part of the reason is that we're given the run speed equivilent of 100 in Athletics from earlier TES games. That's why I said "Archery is too powerful", not specifically "Bows are too powerful".

It's not just the armor itself, it's EVERYTHING combined, meaning multiple pieces need to be tweaked:
- Without abusing Enchanting and Alchemy you can go beyond the 85% damage reduction cap on Heavy Armor (around 567 AR), while it's not possible with Light Armor even with similar perks in Light Armor.

- The major penalty of Heavy Armor as a Sneaky character is the noise from armor weight, which you can decrease by 75% right off the bat using Sneak's Muffle perk + Muffle spell, and there's boots with Muffle on them too. Later on there's a perk in Sneak that eliminates the penalty altogether, as well as a perk in Heavy Armor.

- Steed Stone eliminates all penalties to Heavy Armor without perk investment.

- In-combat switching of armor greatly reduces the effective penalties for Heavy Armor (just switch if they get within melee range, it stops time!)

I'd just like to see more reason to go Light Armor as a Thief or Mage. Please note the balance we're talking here is straight-up numbers, not "what people may like for roleplaying purposes." But of course any changes should play well.

Actually the 0 scaling from Conjuration is partly what I'm talking about. Remember, balance shouldn't be about "everything is sorted out around Level 30", it should be as fluid as possible starting from Level 1. Right now a great start to any non-full-Mage build is using Conjuration for Bound Weapons and Summons, then later abandoning it. But you're right, my little bullet point doesn't make this clear, so I will change it. Personally I would like to see Conjuration that scales at least 80% as well as Smithing alone.

I wouldn't say it's the *only* reason to pick an Orc, I personally think they look intimidating. But yeah, High Elf would be best for a Full Mage, while Breton makes it easier to cap out your Magic Resist. However I don't really think "Once Per Day" is that much of a drawback, and it becomes very, very useful on Master difficulty (especially "Beyond Master Difficulty" I'm playing on now) as a unique "Last Stand" ability. I plan on tweaking more than just the Orc Racial when I get the chance. In Oblivion, bg's "Race and Birthsign Balancing Project" did this well in my opinion. Note I said "Some Racial Abilities", and just picked one as an example

Again, the idea is a mix-and-match system that's intended to go together. People can use some of the balance, but the intent is to use most of it, or the balance will just be shifted to be unbalanced in another direction.

The balancing that should to be done to Destruction Mage Builds is probably the most intensive, yeah. But there is one important thing I think needs to be eliminated, and that's 0-cost spells without perks (or maybe altogether). Of course this really is the way to make Magic work with vanilla and how most people at Levels 30+ are playing their full Destruction Mages. Either that or abusing Calm. Again there's multiple things that need to be done.


Disagreement is good! Feel free to disagree with me or anyone else on this thread. Again, balance is partly about perception, so there's no way one person is going to get it right when it comes to changes for the masses.

A minor gripe, but the effect of the calm spell should be changed. As it stands I can calm someone in battle and immediately they will turn around and walk back to their original spot, allowing me to move into sneak mode and get the backstab bonus within seconds. A simple (hopefully) solution would be to have them disengage combat but continue to watch you until you leave, meaning you would have to leave the area first.

I also like the idea of previous overhaul mods where in at higher levels more mobs would appear, rather than just having initial mobs get major health buffs.

This still does not make a strong argument as to why "Archery" is too powerful. Shadow Warrior is not an Archery perk, it's in the Stealth tree. Archery does significantly less damage per shot than what melee can deal, and it's made up through sneak attacks and range. Neither bows, nor Archery is "too strong" in any way. Bad AI is just bad AI and can be exploited in any number of ways.



Did you not even read what I said? You will not be hitting high AR as a caster/ranged even in plate. You will not be getting hit enough to level your armor skills above 40 or so tops before level 50 unless you are doing something terribly wrong. You do not simply "cap out" damage reduction in plate simply by having it on. It's still better than wearing Robes, but nowhere near the "ultimate protection" claim.


Ok? The armor also weighs more and your travel speed is much slower. Does not matter if you can add a stone that helps with that, because it's not "free". You had to give something else up. Just like the ranged character, a sneaky build will not benefit that much with armor due to having a low skill in it.


Do you actually think that even 0.5% of the people who play this game are going to switch armor every fight? Do you understand how tedious of a process this is? If people really want to slow their game down by that much with all of the UI fumbling, more power to them. The bother is not worth the gain, and should be considered irrelevant.

Posting here what I suggested in another thread, hoping something is implemented eventually. Thanks for the opportunity.

1) Crafting: Make low level items give less experience when your crafting skill raises, to the point of giving zero eventually. This way, people that really want to grind, say, smithing, will have to at least buy more expensive materials to craft higher level items instead of only daggers. Same with other crafting skills. Enchanting weak weapons only using pretty gems can't give the same exp all the time. I expect that to get any experience at lvl 99 enchanting, for instance, someone have to enchant an ebony weapon and use at least a greater gem on that.

2) Destruction: Make the destruction skill increase spell damage instead of decrease spell cost. Also make all destro item enchantments to give +spell damage instead of -spell cost. The goal here is make the lower tier spells viable till higher levels, such as Flames, and make the top tier spells really powerful, but also very expensive (used as special nukes). This way destruction mages would be able to deal high amounts damage, but at the cost of having to manage magicka. (Today they don't have to manage anything after crafting a few items, but the damage is lacking.)

3) Illusion: Make the duration of calm/fear/frenzy spells to widely vary according to the level of the target and the level of the spell cast. This way a specialized illusionist casting high level spells would be able to keep weak enemies controlled for a long time, but not so long against strong enemies. For example, the ultimate frenzy spell would last 60 seconds on low level mobs, but only, say, 5 seconds on a strong enemy. In the same way, even a novice illusionist would be able to control high level enemies, but only for a very very short time. Today, the spell Fury works only up to lvl 6 mobs. After this change, it would work against almost anything, but would make lvl 1 mobs to stay frenzied for, say, 60 seconds; lvl 6 mobs frenzied for, say, 10 seconds; and lvl 20 mobs frenzied for, say, 1 sec only, or even 0.

4) Robes: Considering that the destruction skill and enchanted items would increase spell damage instead of decrease spell cost, then robes could naturally give spell costs reductions. So, while armor gives armor rating and also can have enchantments, robes give cost reduction by default and also can have enchantments as normal. Pure mages that are all about not depleting their magicka would for sure like to wear robes instead of armor.

5) Unused perks (mostly lockpick, speech and pickpocket): Money is too easy to find in the world, and chests usually are not that charming regarding good loot. So, money has to be much harder to acquire and easier to spend (even buying a house is pretty cheap), so that players feel the need to look at the money-making constellations. Also, there could be a few perks in those trees that in fact help in combat or exploration, this way even the players that don't care with roleplaying would at least consider additional options. For example, lockpick has synergy with traps, so a few perks could allow you to disable traps, ignore their damage, etc. Speech has synergy with questing in general, so it could allow alternative shortcuts and solutions. And pickpocket has synergy with thievery and bluffing (sort of), so it could in some way give you the ability to distract enemies and help sneaking.

6) Master chests: Must give better loot. Would be nice being able to find loot stronger than the current usual gear you can get at your level on these chests. For example, if merchants are selling dwarven gear currently in the world, then master chests could spawn ebony gear.

To OP. Are you going to start updating the first post to include consensus fixes (I realize there aren't that many as of yet). We are having a good discussion, but as the thread gets bigger, it will be harder to find which suggestions have been put forward. Also, I think we should work on overarching goals first. Then talk about what kinds of changes can be done to bring the game more in line with those goals.

For example, I believe that you should NEVER be able to craft anything more powerful than the rarest items hand placed in game. This goes for spells too if/when a spellcrafting mod were to be introduced.

Statements like this are a starting point to balancing the game through an overhaul mod. When you get your vision set, then you work on the tweaks to achieve that vision.

Another one could be, all three pure major branches should be equally viable throughout the game. Hybrids can be either harder to play or easier to play, but should fall within a fairly narrow margin in comparison to the pure classes.

It sounds very much like AI fixes need to be a part of a balance fix. So probably someone should start making a collection of AI "exploit" cases and what they feel the AI should be doing instead for those cases.

For example: melee opponents will just stand there and take damage when attacked with a bow from a position they cannot reach. They should instead be running to make targeting harder (and maybe finding a path to the user) and after taking significant damage, hide behind cover until mostly recovered or until opponent can be seen far enough into reachable territory to get in a solid attack.

As for armor switching - it's not really an exploit because heavy armor will prevent you from carrying a lot of stuff that a lighter armored character would be able to carry. In the long run this reduces your profitability or your survivability for the same time invested. But it would be nice if there was some sort of dressing animations when changing armor. (But note that if you are not a fan of reload-from-save, even with armor switching in combat you are still going to be taking a hit or so when you get jumped, before you can switch.)

That said, even the tremendous combat advantage from non-combat perks could be considered "not a bug" (because someone building a non-combat character presumably is not interested in fun combat) but that just makes this a "combat balance" mod instead of a "non-combat balance" mod.

Yeah...I have no experience scripting in AI with TES. However there's one mod out there I linked earlier which is suppose to improve AI...just not through scripting.
I don't really consider it an "exploit" either, it's just another thing to look at when balancing Heavy Armor.
Right, this is really focusing more on combat so far. I can only think of one cool non-combat thing to try, and that's to make a Sneaky character that *avoids* combat as much as possible; TES sure does seem to have that type of build in mind, and I wouldn't want to break that. As for someone roleplaying a Blacksmith that takes over the world, I can't fathom it.

Can you be more specific? I'm trying not to put up conflicting perspectives in the original post.
Well there is stuff out there that can have more than 2 enchants, which is the max for player-made items. I would say the rarest items are the Dragon Priest Masks? Well, not exactly *rare*, but hard to get.

Destruction

Makes the damage = X% of character level and Y% of skill level
As I see it the perk is to unlock different types of spells, this way all spells can be of use regardless of character level.

Armor

Both Heavy and Light affect the regeneration (and maximum) of Stamina and Magicka
The weightless perk in Heavy is too powerful, compared to Light's, which doesn't weight much in the first place.

Stealth plus Archery

Too broken with sniping at safe distance plus [censored] AI.

Lockpick

Makes the perk unlock the level you are allowed to pick.
But then again, most Master chests contain worthless junks.

Potion and Food

Pot-spamming!
And food are useless cooked or uncooked. Need more effects

Agree with everything here except maybe tweak the lockpicking a little bit differently. I'm thinking change all difficulties to be one above the current and have each pek give access to picking locks above it, have the master yield increased loot gains. Example- All novice locks would be as hard as apprentice are currently when you have no perks, With one perk they return to the current (really easy) novice difficulty and you gain the skill to attempt apprentice locks (which in turn would be as difficult as adept currently is) until you take that perk and so on.

To remind ppl: This isn't a post for discussing personal strategies on defeating dragons. Everyone has a different character and different playstyle and different diff. level, so keep this thread clean and post ONLY balance suggestions.
I believe that later on everything would get sorted.


Now personally I believe that the most important balance changes need to be:

1) Removing perks from level-up and switching them to trainers.
Like the pilgrimages of M&M of old... making them expensive enough and with such previous perk/skill level requirements to train you that would prohibit you as much if not more than perk per level

2) Removing auto-heal

3) Redoing the whole loot list and changing the ratio of levelled loot to placed loot so that hand placed loot is more common and sensible.. So that monsters don't drop everything you need basically.
The best loot will be placed in fixed level dungeons and removed from level lists almost entirely

4) Moving most of the XP gain to quest rewards




I dunno, back in the day I made a mod for FALLOUT3 ( Welcome To The Wasteland ) which was quite well received. Might make a balance mod for skyrim, though I doubt it.

The problem with bethesda games is that they're such utter CRAP under the hood, some things are hard-coded, some aren't, it's basically impossible to make a thorough mod without heavy scripting, and heavy scripting causes heavy buggage when it collides with hard-coded things..
And Bethesdas sense of game-balance is basically "let them look at the pretty pictures, screw gameplay, this is modern AAA"

In my opinion, sneaking is way too easy. There's almost no point in skilling the basic quietness. Why? If you're not completely dumb or too progressed ingame, you can easily sneak through.

Fic heavy armor

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1291967-req-fix-heavy-armor/

Fix smithing (there are few threads here already about that), add recepies for alchemy and smithing by NPCs and books. This is very important for smthing to prevent people making dragon armor at level 15.

Another idea regarding sneaking:

The player shouldn't be able to sneak right in the front of the enemies, after all they have eyes. And sneaking is more a thing of avoiding making noise, not becoming completely invisible. So, enemies should have some sort of auto-detection range right in their front, like a limited cone-shaped vision. This way, rogues would have to go behind enemies to sneak attack, making that x15/x30 damage still possible, but not so easy to deliver. In the same way, archers would have to shot from afar and flank the target to be able to remain sneaking.

EDIT: I'm suggesting this because I play sneaky character, and sometimes it's kinda stupid..

Alright for those sneaky types that want more of a challenge, see if the changes to the AI in this mod work out -- http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1269

You can use the AI changes by itself, and it's suppose to be make sneaking harder by tweaking the AI.

Just a clarification - the sneak is separated out from the AI tweaks. So you can try it out without any other changes. To be absolutely specific - following the algorithm's from oblivion -

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:Detection

I've made the fSneakBaseValue higher (-15 to -12), the fSneakSoundsMult, the fSneakSoundLosMult, fSneakLightMult, and increased the fSneakMaxDistance from 2500 to 3000, while decreasing the exterior multiplier from 2.1 to 1.8 so no unnecessary outside aggro's occur (had an issue with bandits attacking giant camps from quite a ways away when I increased the multiplier). I don't remember the exact numbers I changed for the sounds/light multipliers, but it was generally along the lines of 15-25% more difficult.

The one nice thing about working in hexadecimal is that there is no colliding scripts. It either works or it doesn't.

Honestly my two biggest problems are:

1) Dragons are too easy (this is already mentioned however).
They take a while to kill, but you never really feel threatened.

2) Gold too easy to make, and things are too cheap.

I had a fully furnished house within a couple of hours of starting out. This really, really frustrates me. I don't think this has been raised yet, and it seriously frustrates the hell out of me. I could buy anything and everything I come across and I'm not very far into the game. This ruins things for me. Example:
It's gotten to the point where I am so rich I don't bother selling my looted items anymore, because it's not worth the effort of running to the shop to offload it all. I just chuck 'em all in a chest. I could fund the bloody war effort of both the Empire and the Stormcloaks and have plenty left over for horses and wardogs, which I could use as cannon fodder sustainably. It makes no sense like this - it means if you got a group of guys together to go clear bandit strongholds (and you had so many of you, you could do it quite safely even if you're a tradesman not a warrior), you could all retire after a years work and live in luxury.

Am I really the only one who is frustrated by being so incredibly wealthy?

Yeah I think Dragons will probably be the their own mod, and someone might get to them before I do. There are already mods out there that up their Health and Stamina. But I really think they need more AI tweaking and maybe some more Shouts at higher levels.
LTheNiceOne's Economy Mod really seemed to help with not making gold so ridiculously easy to get in Oblivion after a relatively short while, and had a white configuration that could even reduce (or increase!) the amount of gold found in containers, pickpocketing, from quests, etc. while also offering "Cutthroat Merchants" Again this would be its own mod, but it would make Speech and getting Speech perks something of actual value to builds,

I like your ideas, but have a few suggestions.

1. I'd prefer pilhrimages to be at thresholds, like adept, journeyman, and master. Doing that for each skill means a lot of trips as it is.

2. I personally like slow auto-heal, but wish potion spam was controlled. I'd like to see a toxicity mechanic allowing potion use over time according to stamina, and maybe alchemy (higher alchemy produces less toxic potions).

3. A loot overhaul would be great, but a lot of work, and it would be nice if out was modular, because there are others in the works.

4. Are you talking replacing the TES system with a standard XP system? If so, IMO, this should be modular too.

I'd like to see crafting overhauled too, but waiting for the CK to form definite ideas.

Yes.. the whole "cannot fathom how other people play" thing can be a huge issue...

But, for example, consider a passive-aggressive negotiating type, wanting to avoid any personal guilt and getting other people to fight his battles for him.


Are we playing the same game?

Yesterday my character (with 100% sneak and all sneak perks and sneak enhancing gear) had to spend over fifteen minutes fighting three frost trolls. They would die in one hit to a backstab, but all too often my backstab would not work -- the eye would be closed when the sound effect went off from hitting them but it would open instantly after, and I would do only minimal damage on them (maybe no damage?) and then I would have to run away and wait for them to calm down -- almost died once, after trying something else. Meanwhile, I was saddled with an invincible npc that kept them from calming down.

And another variation on that is that they would detect me in the time between when I started to attack and when my attack landed. And this was with me positioned directly behind them and only the one that I was behind would detect me (the others would a few seconds later, though).

That said... sneaking depends very much on light conditions, and that NPC had me trying to tackle them at high noon. (We set out shortly after nightfall but he was so slow that it was noon before we got there).

I completely agree with the first three points. Numbers 2 and 3 I think are especially obvious ways to improve those schools of magic. As for the robes, I like that idea, though why not just have both types of robes?

--

I think when balancing the game we should ignore things like "I can switch from my light armor set to my heavy armor set when they get closer" because I think anything that breaks immersion by forcing you to pause the game by going into the inventory UI is not a concern, as most people just won't bother with it if we managed to make a balanced system.

--

I think dragons need to regenerate health like any other high level monster (trolls for example). If they're still UP after that change, then more changes can be made later



1) I'd personally hate this, and regardless, it's not balance
2) You mean auto-heal potions, auto-heal spells, or both? I think this could be a good change (and maybe I would stop avoiding restoration)
3) Uhhh... hopefully we won't have to do this. I mean, I think there are bigger priorities anyway
4) Why?

People talking about awarding XP for Quests, one way to make Quests seem "more worth it" would be to allow the option in a "Living Economy" mod that makes gold harder to come by from buying/selling and general dungeon delving to increase the amount of gold awarded in quests, and add gold rewards (in addition to other rewards) to most quests. Some people just like the linearity of quests that reward well and I don't see the harm in having it as an option.

So throwing out wild numbers, let's say a typical playthrough will see 50% less gold, while quests will bring in 50%-100% more gold with an average of 25% more gold if you keep up the quests.

The simplest change would be to remove gold scaling on anything but quests, then add a small bit of gold for all quests.

Edit: Also, how do you feel about toning down the horribly fast autorun speed, upping the walk speed a bit, and balancing it all with a reduced sprint cost? That's another balancing thing which could be done both in general to make kiting a little more involved and make the Heavy Armor penalty to sprint stamina usage mean a bit more. Wouldn't be a big change most likely.

I personally think quest gold rewards are too high as it is. But that's just my opinion :0.

I agree with the walk/run speed balance here...it might even be enough to get me drop the contoller and go back to the mouse (not likely on a thief though). I'm a bit confused as to the logic behind the reduction of sprint cost. You want to make kiting more challenging right? I personally would like to see sprint only usable in very short bursts, since enemies don't seem to sprint themselves. So, an increase in cost then. Of course, you would have to either reduce sprint cost out of combat (if possible) or more likely, increase out of combat stamina regen. Or...if it is possible, increase normal run speed outside of combat (the best approach imo, no one wants to be playing a stupid sprint/rest mini-game evrywhere they explore).

Right now, Stamina Regen is 33% of normal in combat (along with Health and Magicka). I want to see a limited number of potions usable per second, so that's going to need changes to regeneration.

By the way, when you guys mean "auto-heal" are you talking about the full heal on level up, or your base health regeneration? If it's the health regeneration I agree it's a bit much...often I find myself not even bothering with using "Healing" per second after a battle, even if there are more enemies nearby. However, especially if we're tweaking potions so they can't be used an inifinite number of times per second, there needs to be an alternative other than Restoration. I've got some ideas in mind, but I need to think on it some more...feel free to suggest!