All the complaints about level scaling in Skyrim make me laugh.

It's nothing at all like it was in Oblivion. Oblivion's scaling was terrible; it changed entire encounter lists every "level step."

Skyrim is much better. It's like New Vegas; you can encounter weak guys and strong guys at any time based on the area, but even stronger guys begin to spawn the higher level you get and it's not EVERY enemy that spawns is one of the super high ones.

Yes, the way it's done is a lot better.
But the fact, that it's still only dependant on the player's level instead of being tied to actually combat affecting skills and perks, is still bad.

Wow .. you haven't even understood anything!

It's not about leveling your combat skills, it's about how leveling other skills affects you negatively.

Topics like these reinforce my already concrete belief that one should never buy Bethesda games for a console. Pity I had to waste so much money to learn that lesson.

I've never been able to finish Oblivion on my 360, and believe me when I say I tried. Level scaling completely ruined that game - and to add insult to injury, I later discovered that if I'd owned the PC version I could've solved the problem by simply installing a mod. A buddy of mine swore by Oblivion XP, and once I saw it in action (and how natural - or vanilla - it felt to use it) felt it made me wonder just why the hell the concept of gaining experience seems to have gone out of style as of late.

I haven't played Skyrim yet, but if it's anything like Oblivion in regards to level scaling you might as well stop playing the game until someone releases a mod that fixes the problems. Maybe someone will develop a Skyrim XP for those people who don't like to get bullied into specific character roles just because said specific character roles are the only ones who can survive getting facerolled by a dragon.

On the bright side, at least I made the right call when I figured that waiting for the modding community to catch up before purchasing Skyrim was a good idea.

I haven't seen any thing like Vegas. Vegas did not seem scaled at all to me. In vegas if you tried to kill a deathclaw at level 10 you will be instakilled. In this game I don't think there is anything that is impossible to kill at any level (provided you have good gear, potions, etc)

Yea well the funny thing is that you can only see that when having 2 characters. If you had not leveled up these skills your character would be more powerful. If you don't believe me, test it yourself.
Ah and btw i got steel plate armor at around level 15 with my warrior from dungeons.

After realising this thing you will see that non-combat skills gimp your character except maybe when "you powerlevel a skill like enchanting to 100 and doing all the enchantments right away" since enchanting is op. But this obviously svcks. This though is the only way "you will feel progression" if you waste your time with non-combat skills.

It's funny how people say blacksmithing etc are great. It will seem like that since they don't have a character without them to compare them to and since they already gimped their character while raising it, when at 100 they felt an upgrade and just simplisticaly thought "ah blacksmithing or alchemy or etc is good".

For example they make a bunch of potions with alchemy etc but the really funny thing is that if they didn't have it in the first place they would not need these potions/weapons/etc at all!

This is exactly how my first character is, sans the shield and armor for Lydia. I reached level 25 with a Smithing of 63. I have absolutely no problem and I everything I have done has been a fairly casual and easy approach. I haven't been exploiting the game, just using the basic things the game gives me. That in mind, it is very odd that so many people are struggling so much. It's not that difficult.

Wow, you didn't read the thread at all!

People are complaining about getting owned in combat because they leveled up through non-combat skills, so now their combat skills are low but the enemies' are not.

Clearly you never attacked a Mammoth or Giant at level 10. Or a Blood Dragon.

Yeah I did, I kited them with my archer, killed a mammoth and a giant at the same time. Wasn't hard, I was just running up and down a set of rocks, and I was way lower than level 10, more like level 5. I play on normal, and it took about 10 minutes. I had just talked with that chick in whiterun that wanted a mammoth tusk so I though I had to go out and kill a mammoth.

In Vegas it would have taken about 2 hours and saving and reloading 50 times to kill a deathclaw at level 5.

Or 2 bears at lvl 7 when you still have crap for gear. I know the other poster said with "good gear potions" etc. but at lvl 7 it's not like I have a whole lot of stuff yet, not with my wandering the roads playstyle anyway. The bears could swipe half my health off in a couple swipes while my ability to damage them was very very slow. Yeah, I svck, lol.

I ran away, and some wandering elves killed the bear for me, but not before the bear killed one of them. So then I looted the body for some Elven armor. Score!

We are not even talking about difficulty here. It's not about struggling it's about progression.


Again, it's not about getting owned. It's about progression. You really fail to understand that? It's like whenever you "dare" to do anything else in the game beyond combat, enemies power level their "combat skills" behind your back. And even when you get that steel plate armor from blacksmithing and improve it, it will seem like that armor was weaker than the rags you were wearing at the start. Are you really ok with that?

Im actually having a different 'issue' with the level scaling than these. I like the current difficulty level I am having at Lv9, but I dont want to go all over Skyrim setting things around that level for the rest of the game. So I am trying to level up with a mix of combat and other skills before moving out to the wider world. Cant find much around Whiterun to combat level though.

Anyone know how the level setting 'regions' are broken out map wise?

There is no level capping that I have seen. I know the Devs talk about it, but I have yet to see it. I just finished the companions quest line, which I started when I was like less than level 10, and now at 32 and plenty of the fights were difficult, which means obviously they were not capped at level 10.

As far as getting combat experience, just start exploring dungeons, they are literally everywhere and full of baddies. Or just do the first few quests of the main questline.

So really there is no point to not exploring more.

My only advice is to hold off on the last few quests of a couple of the quest lines, because the rewards you get, I have heard they are scaled, and you dont want to get them scaled to a low level.

Not to mention, why spend all that adding great crafting experiences to the game, and then discourage the player from using them by causing them to have weaker combat skills? Seems like a total waste to me.

But I am sure some great modders will fix this problem, just svcks having to wait for Beth to release the tools to fix it.

Good to know, thanks!

I was afraid of starting to explore dungeons because there arent many really close by, and I was afraid of going too far from Whiterun and 'setting' another region at my current level.

I agree and see how this can definitely be a problem. So, why not do something like what Runescape does? Have it so non-combat skills dont contribute to your leveling up. Or better yet, have it so your combat skills dont contribute to the "leveling up" of the enemies. Idk why they didnt make it like that in the first place.

Well, that sounds like a reasonable suggestion, except for one thing. If you nerfed the crafting skills like that, people who wanted to craft their way to another level, or who were only interested in crafting for RPing purposes, would then complain that the game is biased against them, since it takes 3x as long to level up a crafting skill. Also, IMO, the purpose of crafting is to supplement your character, so some balance should be sought between combat and crafting skills.

I don't really mind the level-scaling, as it's about the only way the game can still provide a challenge to a tricked-out L50+ character, but at the same time I can understand where some of those who are opposed to it are coming from. You see, I also play Diablo II, and in that game the scaling gets rather excessive at higher levels, to the point where at the highest difficulty only a handful of builds can clear areas (the game is mostly large exterior regions full of critters) in a reasonable amount of time.

What I cannot understand, though, is the knee-jerk reactionism exhibited against scaling simply because it exists; this is especially puzzling to me when I know that some of the folks I see doing it had high-level characters in Morrowind before the Tribunal expansion, and therefore knew all too well what happens when you don't have any scaling. Short form for those who don't know: static critter levels + character who can exceed the highest of same by 15 or more = player death by boredom.

You dont see the companion black smith leaving his forge to go slay dragons and giants do you? He doesnt complain about it either. He does just like the rest of the crafter isn the game do....hire your fighting ass to go find and kill things for him. Maybe if you level up purley through crafting you should hire your self an assassin or warrior (they are in the first inn and bar), give them enchanted gear and let them fight for you.

I like this solution. If a player wishes to do nothing but crafting, they will be weak combat wise, but rich and could also equip their followers with the best gear possible. Also, followers level with the PC, and they have specific skills which level with them, meaning they would be able to combat the critters in the dungeons for you.

isnt it just about getting the balace right with your character? im kinda like a warrior mage and balance my perks on how i want my character to develop and how he can handle himself in any situation, so i have good armor/one handed/restoration and destruction (and others), as i prepare my character for any situation i perked my one handed to make me deal more damage, wearing good armour so i can take good damage and increased my destruction skills for the sticky situations i sometimes find my self in and obviously restoration for healing, this balancing works well for me and i smith to increase the damage my swords do and increase my armour rating so i can take more damage. I think somone said earlier its about strategy, it is, you cannot expect to go into every sitiation and expect to go about it in the same way all npcs are diffrent so you have to go about this in the same way. i dont think just by doing one thing you take it away from something else.

If I understand this correctly, people are complaining because they put a bunch of time into leveling their secondary skills and aren't as good at fighting as people who put a bunch of time into fighting? If you are really good at enchanting and blacksmithing, then go hire a merc and outfit him with a bunch of aweosme stuff and let him do the fighting while you walk behind him and loot. How can you expect to be a 70 at smithing and enchanting and still be as effective as someone who's 70 at a major fighting skill?

I generally dont mind the level scaling. But i do wish there was indicator to know if an enemy is stronger or weaker as i believe mobs like Giants and probably others dont level scale ?

I also wish non combat skills like speech, lockpicking, smithing, alchemy and enchanting didnt add to your leveling as they can quickly hurt you due to the level scaling aspect and combat.

Kinda odd that this didnt come up in testing, or maybe it did /shrug.

No, people are complaining because they have 40 in a fighting skill and 40 in a (or several) secondary skill, which means they're fighting enemies that are scaled to fight characters with 80+ in their combat skill. A character with just 40 in a combat skill and nothing else is fighting weaker enemies, and therefore is stronger in comparison.

Character A: 40 in two combat skills (say, one-handed and blocking).
Character B: 40 in one-handed, 40 in blocking, 40 in speechcraft, and 40 in lockpicking.

Character B is facing tougher enemies because they wanted to explore and talk to people. They are exactly as good at fighting as character A, but seem worse because they are facing tougher enemies.

Character B also chose to do that, and (theoretically) has the ability to both purchase and loot better equipment because of their speechcraft (stuff is cheaper) and lockpicking skills (locks are easier to pick, you find better loot). Character A may deal more damage but their equipment costs more to buy and they make less money off selling stuff. And your example seems to be comparing 2 characters of different levels, because charactrer A wouldn't have as high a level if those were their only skills.