What? I don't even see what you are basing your arguments off of. When did I say the boss should have items that are super powerful in comparison to the lesser enemies?
And even if they are, what's unrealistic about your average draugr having much worse gear than the draugr boss that the entire burial site was built round? If I enter Geirmund's Hall, I expect Geirmund himself (or whoever was the boss) to be a unique experience and far beyond the general rabble of draugr that have been laid to rest in there. If anything, it's unrealistic if the main boss ISN'T something special. Instead of the boss dropping a crap sword that I will vendor, how about him dropping a unique sword (just make up a name, "Lifesapper" or whatever) that will be a treasured tool for several levels to come? As I said, receiving generic items after clearing a huge dungeon is, to me, utterly unrewarding.

Have you traveled beyond Whiterun and Riverwood, Phitt? That's pretty much the starting low-level area of the game. Try heading out to the Reach or the Rift and see how quickly you get murdered by Forsworn and Spriggans respectively.

Chuckle, I've read your previous post. Here, I'll repeat the link as I think you are onto a great idea:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1264415-wip-interest-check-static-dungeons/

As for me? I'd not be much help at the moment, just feeling a little sad, so much wasted promise. The game peaked at about 30 hours after which it has been all downhill. You see it's not just the level scaling, forced character development and lack of wow wrt artefacts, I'm finding the entire game lacks wow. Clothing, items, so much looks the same. Dungeons, epic in size though some may be, the ambient sounds are disappointing and the limited tile sets are repetitive. The tile set problem extends to most all buildings inside and out. The landscape is vast but having travelled quite widely I'm finding it too to be repetitive. And major quest lines, judging from the mage story are vastly improved over Ob but the end still had me shaking me head in disbelief - 30% removed from the size of the dungeons and two more levels of progression would have made all the difference. The whole game, like the PC textures, feels like too little spread too far. And noses! Don't get me started on the missing polygons in the tip of the noses... it bugs me

It was fun, good fun while it lasted. Now time for a break.

I haven't noticed any gear scaling. Level 24 now, bandits still don't have anything above hide or leather armors, even the bosses. Forlorn still have forlorn gear. I've seen a few more orcish/elven items laying around, but I think those were placed.

Only place I've found lots of dwemer gear was in, surprise, dwemer ruins. And even then I only found daggers, a sword or two, a warhammer, and gaunlets/boots. Have yet to find any chest armor in anything higher than steel plate though.

Shops might scale, but the only things I've been buying is training and spells so far.

The items you find in chests and shops appear to go hand in hand: First iron then a little steal, then some orc, then some dwemer, some elven, all appear as your level increases. I doubt you'll find elven at level ten for example, this is the item levelling addressed by the thread. I would love to be proved wrong (the CS will tell all) and find a uniquely modelled two handed sword or heavy armor of awesome-totally inappropriate for my level-ness, neither is of any use to me by choice but I would display them at home and smile at them every time I went out adventuring.

The item progression is extremely rigid as far as I can tell. With my character it has been fur->leather->elven in terms of armour, and iron->steel->orcish->elven->dwemer with weapons - all in an extremely ordered fashion, both in shops and in dungeons.

Ehh made a mage and I am currently level 9 and their ward is tanking what little magic I have, it svcks and I also have rockjoint and am still clueless on how to get rid of it so... haha the level scaling is fine. I keep the difficulty on Adept even. I don't personally like to change the defaults if absolutely necessary.

well, if they do, wait for them to drain their magicka until they drop their ward, THEN attack(wards tend to either cost a fair ammount of it per second, or have a fairly short time limit), and rockjoint is a disease, so you could find something like a cure disease potion/spell to cure it, or go to the chapel in any of the town and receive a blessing, because doing so also heals all diseases

^^^ This. The problem as I see it is that we all know in the back of our noggins that this stuff scales up, which is what we used to refer to as character's having out-of-character knowledge. It was a difficult hurdle in the old pen-n-paper days, and it's not less of one here. The only way around it is to pretend you don't really know that, and then pretend to not be upset with what you find. I'm all for RP, but this just gets under my skin.

Well, I hate to do this, but in this case I think it adequately applies: you are comparing real life to a fantasy world. In real life, we don't get stronger the more things we kill either (or the more quests we complete, whatever IRL would be considered questing other than shopping the day before Christmas). And the older we get, we don't suddenly start finding more amazing and valuable goodies, nor do we find the young'uns cowering in fear and awe as the old geezers walk by.

Traditionally, in all adventure/RPG games all the way back to the days before video games even existed and we had pieces of paper with our character's stats and made decisions with multi-sided pieces of plastic, bosses were always far tougher and guarded the best loot. It makes sense in a way. Why would a boss share his stuff with his lackeys? Heck no! That's his stuff. His minions get a little share, and just enough equipment to do their jobs. That's it.

Mine has been different somewhat, I found elven after dwarven. But this scaling is reasonable. They aren't going to give you high level equipment when you are low leveled. It svcks the challenge out of the game.

Oh I got the Mace of Molag Bal at level ten, and it was still good at level 20, but Dawnbreaker(which I got at level 20) does not compare to the current loot(glass).

In my mind, level scaling is fine and does not need a mod.

Also, try going to a dwemer ruin at level 4, and you'll get your ass handed to you.

No it doesn't, or at least it doesn't have to. If the game is balanced around owning the odd piece of kick [censored] equipment anyway. Morrowind did it right (up until about 50-60 hours of play), is that not possible anymore, is it just easier for Bethesda to work around the hopeless looting system they created for Oblvion? Who knows? I'm struggling to comprehend their decision to stick with levelled loot after all the complaining though.

I've still never come across an experience (in approx 25 years of playing computer games, age = 30) that compares to finding Eleidon's ward by chance for the first time in Morrowind. It made the whole experience special in a way that Bethesda/any developer just haven't managed since. I can't believe that they've scrapped this system of finding great unique loot every now and then, in favour of the current travesty.


I'm guessing these were quest rewards? Ie,, the game funnelled you towards getting them? Wheres the magic in that? Discovering ancient forgotten unique items in well hidden reccesses after fighting a much higher level enemy is where it's at, using my brain to defeat the boss because he's too hard to go toe to toe with. I want to feel like I've stumbled across this shield/sword etc and it's the stuff of legend. Even better, why not both!?


Well you're most welcome to your opinion, but I guess you weren't lucky enough to have the same experience as I had in Morrowind.

Just a quick contribution:

Last night I saw a frost bear beat the [censored] out of a dragon. Easily the most absurd thing I have seen thus far in Skyrim.

Is OP kidding? I've been playing at the difficulty below Adept and I've been killed in one hit by Giants when I was level 12 or so.

Whaaa? Try walking in a giant's camp and say that...

I think people are over-reacting because of radiant story. Bandits still have junk gear at level 24, and a dwemer ruin kicked my butt at level 10. The only real problem I have experienced is in "prefixed" enemy types like necromancers & undead, where at low level I encountered novice enemies, and as I become more powerful I've started to face exclusively adept mages. That, and vendor level scaling. Vendor level scaling is just ridiculously silly imho. Not as bad as OB, but still really silly. What, do smiths just refuse to sell Elven armor to paying customers based on their apparent strength?

As for dungeon variety, I really don't see what you're talking about. I've stumbled upon a series of dungeons with very unique draugr (one cloned & teleported) with unique artifacts that combined (after a three-round boss battle) to create a pretty rad super-amulet. There are a fair number of generic dungeons, sure, but there are also some pretty special dungeons out there.

OP: If you kill a dragon at level 4, that means that you started the main quest at level 4 (or lower). This means that you want to kill dragons at level four. If you don't want to kill dragons at level four, don't start the main quest at level four. The MQ is designed to be played at whatever level you want to play it at.

So this is MHO and a reflection of how I like to play. I am very well aware that this is not shared by most. I like a more realistic, gritty, and surprising environment. I really don't care to much about the loot, in fact, less is usually better.

Vendors: Mod vendors to sell nothing better than steel.
Enemies: Mod standard enemies to never have anything better than steel (lvl 15 now and this seems pretty reasonable as is).
Bosses: May or may not have good stuff. Good stuff defined as better than steel.
Cut gold to 10% of current amounts. I purposely avoid looting and I still have plenty of gold.
Redefine materials balance - eliminate more damage = heavier equipment - better weapons are not heavier. Up damage of steel and refactor all weapons around that.
Refactor level differential of opponents to create wider ranges for common NPCs. Refactor bosses upwards. Going to do a dungeon at low level? Might be best to leave the boss alone.

Visually what I get is somewhat more plain as the vast majority of NPCs have simple weapons and armor. From a game play PoV what I get is much more variety since I have expanded the possible levels of opponents both upward and downward. I like that style of play where sometimes a fight is very easy and others it is very difficult or even impossible. IMHO it's OK to have to come back another day.

In Oblivion I got great variety by creating more generic types with different AI characteristics. Instead of 3 bandit types I had 15, each with different AI settings. Some would fight to the death while others would run. Some would fight cautiously and others recklessly. Oblivion varied the look so I never really knew what I was going to face in combat. Hopefully Skyrim has similar capabilities. Skyrim AI is certainly a step up so I am hopeful..

Must have CK ...

I've said this a few times now in different threads, but I guess it's worth repeating, if you hit level 20 or w/e and dwarven gear starts showing up on vendors, and then you hit up a dungeon and you find in it dwarven gear as well, it is coincidence that you do. It means that dungeon's level range was some variation of 15-20, 10-20, in which by entering you lock the dungeon at it's highest level of 20, and certain rewards will be leveled (there is hand-place loot in this game), therefore netting you access to dwarven gear inside. It could also mean that the dungeon range was 20-25, 20-30, w/e and that by entering you lock the dungeon at it's minimum level of 20, and certain rewards will be leveled (unless again this dungeon contains hand-placed loot), therefore again netting you access to dwarven gear inside. If by chance at level 20 you enter a dungeon, but this time it's range is 35-40, you will lock the dungeon forever more at 35, and will need an insane amount of time, skill, and patience to clear a dungeon 15 levels higher than you, but will be rewarded with certain level 35 loot (ebony/elven/glass w/e, or powerful hand-placed loot.) This is how it works to the best of my knowledge.

As far as vendors go, I agree that has to go, hopefully Beth will patch that, or release the CK soon so someone can mod it out. I loved in FO:NV that I could go and buy a GRA weapon from a vendor at level 2-3 for like 20k gold, by breaking the bank at the casinos, and I get a nice little boost to start the game off. The best thing was the guns weren't too ridiculously powerful, because at level 2-3 my skill was crap, so the gun didn't do it's maximum damage, but was nice to have the choice to do that. I would say that vendor should probably not be selling glass/ebony/daedric gear, because of it's power, make it so you can only craft it, or find it hand-placed in dungeons, or dungeons with a minimium level range of 35+.

As far as I know, regions also have a level range, so clearing the starting area of bandits/wolves, leaving then returning to said area later in the game, will have you fighting the same puny bandits/wolves again, however there will also be a few new spawns in these areas that will be around your own level, to keep you honest and on your toes.

This is probably the closest to my opinion I've seen spelled out. Just like in Morrowind, you really didn't have people selling high quality armor - no enchanted stuff, certainly. Without the different damage types like morrowind though, it's hard to make a tier listing that isn't based around damage. Weapon speed vs. damage might be what makes a difference, if glass is lighter, it does less damage but swings much faster than a Daedric sword of the same type.

The other neat way of bringing some balance to powerful items is their state of repair when found and the cost of repair. Sadly repair is now out the window.

"But having items deteriorate in Ob was a total pain". Indeed it was but the problem was not with the repair system, the problem was with number of encounters and the amount of item damage each encounter could cause.

I skimmed over this topic, but I do not see anyone talking from deep experience here -- I mostly see a lot of extrapolation from limited cases. Maybe I missed something important? (Certainly, I see people representing their experiences as universal even though their experiences seem very different from mine.)

So it's hard for me to even think intelligently about this topic.

Anyways, if people want to put together whatever mods, they should feel free to do so. But for people on the fence about this issue, I would like to advocate a few grains of salt: There's a lot going on in this game...

My experience comes from dozens to hundreds of hours modifying Oblivion and then seeing the exact same thing happening in Skyrim. You are correct in one regard, we don't have the CK yet so we don't know for sure. But if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I don't mind putting out ideas based on the assumption that it's a duck.

As far as what people should do - they should always take things like this with a grain of salt. I freely admit that my tastes are far from universal. I put them out there for others to look at just as I read the opinions of others to refine my own.

double post

whoa, there.

Please stop mentioning giants as an example for unleveled enemies. They only attack if you attack them or if you get too close to their mammoths and stay there for a while. I met enough of them to know what I'm talking about. If you don't want to get attacked by them you won't get attacked by them.


Sorry, I can't follow your logic. I know the main quest is designed that way, that's what this thread is about. I don't like level scaling and all that, you know?