» Mon Nov 19, 2012 6:51 pm
I find modifying the difficulty with simply changing the damage values lazy and just... bad. I know this is how the vanilla game works as well and I always play with the master difficulty. It works in the early game (even though some fights are just impossible without exploits), but you can really see how broken it is later. It takes forever to kill tougher enemies while they hit very hard. This sounds like it's not a problem, but it gets ridiculous at some point. Not to mention the followers aren't nearly as weak as the player, and most of the traps and shouts are useless against enemies. Try the fire breath on a high level dragon and tell me you see a change in its health bar. The way the difficulty is implemented is just bad.
This being said, it's really hard to change the difficulty efficiently, especially if it's that limited. What I would like to see, is improved combat, that would actually require some skill instead of hack&slash on easy difficulties and exploits on harder difficulties. Clever use of shouts, skills, poisons, potions, traps and environment wouldn't hurt either. A good example of adding difficulty in a positive way are the realism mods (haven't tried them though).
All of this is just my opinion of course, but I'd love to see a well-made difficulty mod.