Hello,

(First off, I want to say I did a search without finding previous discussion on this. But feel free to just respond with a link to an earlier thread. Thanks.)

Anyone else finding the way XP and levels work in Skyrim to be incredibly annoying?

The main issues are:

If you play this game like any other, at first, your primary skills race ahead of your overall level, making you horribly overpowered. For instance, you can easily have a One-handed skill of 75 when you (and your foes) still are at level 20.

Then, as you approach 100 in your favored skills, you face a dilemma. Either you slow down (stop) levelling (which is boring), or you take up other skills. But if you take the latter approach, enemies will get stronger while you won't - you will become more flexible and diversified, but relative to your enemies, you will become weaker at what you are known to do.

For instance, you could have a One-handed skill of 95 when you (and your foes) still are at level 25. But at level 50 or 75, your One-handed skill will still be at 95 (or close enough, i.e. 100)!


This effectively means that just playing a standard warrior, archer, or mage is not an option in Skyrim. You simply must hunt down enchantments and potions, and take up smithing. Not because you want to, but because enemies keep getting stronger but you don't.

But this isn't the real problem. The real problem is that to avoid a skill progression where at first you become horribly overpowered and later slow down to see the world pass you by, you must yourself pace your levelling in your primary skills. You must yourself take a break from hacking/shooting/blasting stuff, and waste time on smithing, speaking, ... etc just to make your overall level keep pace with your primary skill levels!

Compared to other rpgs I am baffled by this behavior. It feels like Bethesdas developers live in a bubble where no other games than the Elder Scrolls series exist...

There are more inexplicable annoyances in an otherwise great game, but this is by far my largest beef.

I love Skyrim, but would dearly love a mod that adds, as an option, a completely different leveling system where physical opponents are of a level that matches your physical skills (onehanded weapons and heavy armor for example), while magical opponents match your ability to withstand magical assaults. And most importantly: that foes do not become tougher in melee/magical combat just because I train my ability to haggle with merchants or collect flowers or somesuch!

(As it is now, I can trivially kill any foe trying to kill me with steel no matter how mighty or fearsome, but any two-bit bandit wizard can blast me to smithereens. The lack of a coherent gameplay experience is making my mind reel...

Anyone else thinking the same?