In a properly balanced game, this wouldn't happen except in certain circumstances.

yah my mind plays devil's advocate sometimes and when i read that statement from Beth. i was like YES!!!...wait wait could it be those 2 situations i posted. because i really hope thye do make it more difficult but thye didnt straight out say they were makign ti difficult so it could eb taken boths ways =[ Ilove how they are wording all this stuff, because u could take the sentance as they are making the game difficult or that they are rebalncing certain areas for difficulty because its to difficult for etc etc player. I was expecting them to make the game more difficult with the DLCs since thats were beth usually crks up the diffculty. God i miss Dead Money, and sooooooo many peple complained that it was to hard and such and lots of people voted it to eb their least favorite DLC for that game. Ow wells, the masses are fickle fickle people.

But ya TES is a game where when ya are at the top or have maxxed out stuff, u are considered a god to the masses of npcs. You have become like that single forsworn who took out a 1000 soldiers by himself before he went down, or ysmr and his 500 companions and take on a whole freaking country of high elves and such. You become like the legends people read, sing, and talk about i strenght and such. it fits being as this is a dungeon crawer RP game, and it makes sence to me it being a RP game that i eventually become a mighty unstoppable beast like the legends of old. I mean it explains why the comon people give you a job of slaying a dragon and ur by urself standign there like "just me? slay a dragon? by myself?" and most except the cool [censored]s expect ya to go and do it and get it done lol. ow wells like i stated, its all opionions yours, mine, everyone elses. theres soem who are quite happy with the difficulty of the game, there are some who are not happy with the difficulty, andthens theres quite a bit who i believe havent even paid attention to the difficulty and just having fun playing te game and dont knwo what the hell we are talkign about. Bethesda cant please us all as i stated above, ut tey still made one helluva game, besides thats what mods are for to change what we dont like. Andif ya on console, then shame on you lol, i kid i kid seriosuly. i started TES on the 360 and had a blast.

There's a few ways to re~balance the game so as to minimize, or completely untouch, the people that like to RP someone using just Iron gear.

but then its how? because its gotta be a way that all specs and playstyles will be able to pass or complete. Im not flaming, btu the only thigns i come up in my head on how to advance the difficulty, will either make certain players have to lower the diffculty, not be able to survive, or just have to make them pass or "cheat" and then it would have coem full circle on those players being forced into a different playstyle.

You avoid such issues by adapting the encounter to suit the character. They attempted this in Oblivion, with spawn substitutions as part of the level-scaling system, but ham-handed the implementation and got panned for it.

One way to finesse the substitution is to do it by rank rather than type: a low-level character might get a 'minion-class' member of the opposition in question, while a high-level one would get a 'boss-class' member and a top-level, tricked-out character would get a 'super-class' member. Here, 'super' means a 'boss' type with top gear and added bonuses (in this case, perks, which NPCs usually don't have), and possibly special abilities (Orchendor's 100% Magic Resistance, for example) as well.

Not at all, one way you can do it is like General Masters said.

Another way is, instead of just deciding what spawns based on the player's level, you take into account other factors as well, such as Armor, Damage, Magic ability, etc.

Then you can spawn enemies respective to the player's level and with some positives or negatives based on how the player is built. If a player is level 10 but has 300 Armor because of the crafting system, you spawn a level 10-15 mob that may have additional damage, or can bypass armor via their own perk.

You can also create enemies that have abilities such as Dispel, or have more enemies Disarm, etc.

Lots of things you can do.

I like challenge just as much as they next guy, but lets face it, games are only as challenging as you want them to be. I have been playing video games since frogger and pit fall on atari back in 1983. I have played countless RPG's that go back to the original final fanstasy, Ultima, Daggerfall, etc. I beat Mike Tyson's punch out when I was 15 years old, after only playing it for a week. I beat Contra and Castlevania in less time than that. Doom II and Quake arena were boring for me, I racked up so many frags in those games that I felt sorry for the other players and I ended up quitting them in short time. Ultima Online was released around 1996 and I started playing it right away, my guild made so many players quit the game that the developers eventually nerfed PvP and tried to get rid of hardcoe PvPers by implementing the "reputation system" and the "murderer patches" and nerfs to thieves, so that guys like me wouldn't stick around.

Games are not hard, they're easy and they always have been. They were easier 10 years ago then they are today. My skills easily eclipse that of what any game developers would ever deem commonplace for a multi million dollar project. I figured that out about 15 years ago.

Skyrim, is a challenging game if you want it to be. For me, I play it on master difficulty and I don't use health potions or restoration. I play perma death so that when my character dies I delete him. There are times when I will even delete my character if he takes damage of any kind. The game can offer as much challenge as you will allow it to. If your goal is to rush to the ending as fast as possible or to exploit the game then you have no argument, thats your agenda. But lets be real here, there isn't a game out there where you can't do that. No game will ever be challenging to the point where you feel overwhelmed by it. Master of Orion 3 on insane difficulty isn't even that hard of a game if you spend enough time playing it and learning the technologies.

Human element will always overcome difficulty no matter how hard something is.

RPG = Role Playing Game. Role means you impersonate a character and play like it. Some RPG tell you who and how the character is. TES games lets you decide. Except not all choices you have in creating your character are equaly balanced.

Obvious is that if you want to play as a warrior (one handed, two handed) you WILL have almost no barriers in doing so and this is good. The story (as good/bad as it is) almost perfectly fits the warrior.

But if you want to play an assassin (and by tradition there is this sort of archteype) you will miss a good one handed or two handed skill in too many situations to overlook this aspect. The story doesn`t offer much for an assassin and please tell me how you can handle dungeons as an assassin? The same goes (or even more) for a thief and I would like to understand how should a thief handle dungeons playing as a thief?

Also, the aproach of quests should be different. I give my example of "honest and willing" character I tried to create: thieves guild mainly implied battle, I knew I work with thieves guild and the story told me they are "honest" characters. The fame and infamy system in Oblivion is missing here though was a good way to "pay" for your ways.

An enemy should be handled differently: wariors would fight it, mages would spell it, assassins would assassinate it (from behind, or in sleep, etc.) thieves would would steal it`s weapons, plant some traps etc. Equal tratment would mean all those ways to deal situations would work and you would still have to pay the tribute of not having other skills.

So, as open as the world IS, the meanings to play the game aren`t.

To say one should auto-limit itself is an idea but a not very working one. To do or not something should be dictated by a win/lose ratio that Skyrim does not offer. You are free to hack with no consequences and only because you can. You are not free to stealth because you are likely to be discovered. So you hack. You hack because the quest asks you to deal someone and hacking is there, you`d be a fool not to use it.

The game that asks you to limit yourself in order to be fun is a bad game.
Limiting yourself is just a little personal thing which you can do in order to spice things up, but it's game's job to provide challenge, not player's.

well said!

Well then that's just too bad. They'll have to adapt. That's the way it's supposed to be in a video game. It's better for them to have to do a better job at building an effective character than it is for people to have to handicap themselves. Enough of this sissy nonsense!

This game gives me the freedom to create any kind of character I want to. I can create an uber character that clears a room in a blink or I can create a character that needs to take a more measured tactical approach or I can create character that is weak and pitiful. All of these character types are challenged by the game, just in different ways.

Soooooo..... people telling you to "adapt" when you complain that the game doesn't cater to your playstyle is "bad design", but you telling other people that games should be hard (because that's your preferred playstyle) and that they should adapt....... hmm. Interesting.



Personally, I like a world with a variety of styles of games. More choices and variety. Not every game is made for every player, or will satisfy every player. (which is the point of the guy saying "If you're not having fun, try something else". Why expect that every game will be to your taste?) If all games were targeted at just one demographic or playstyle, a whole lot of players would lose out.

in other words.... if every game were Dark Souls / Ninja Gaiden, a great many people wouldn't be playing video games. And that would svck.
(And it'll never happen, because the industry has gotten too big for them to slash their market down to a fraction of "l33t" dudes trying to use games to prove their manhood)

You realize what you're saying is "I play how I want to, and It's not fun". You can try to make them change the game for you. It might work. But what is certain to work, is changing yourself. I'm only giving advice, I gave a couple of examples. No need to follow them.

This is not an MMO, no one subscribes. They already budgeted how much money will be spent, and for what it will be spent on. Any work that is continuing is pre-decided. I doubt they will deviate from that.
Some of the DLC will hopefully be harder.

Remember in Fallout 3, Point Lookout DLC was a good bit more difficult than the normal game. The swamp rednecks did a good bit more damage than normal mobs. Almost like a Deathclaw. Almost.

If you try to be the best, you probably will become the best. If you then get bored, setting your own challenges is guaranteed to work. It depends on no one else, but yourself. Has to work. It's less likely the company will change the game to make it more challenging for you. Especially when the only projected income is more sales of the game, which will drop soon as everyone who wants it, buys it, and a 1 time $10 charge for DLC. There just isn't the money to change it to suit you, and a few others. Don't think of it as "limiting yourself", think of it as "challenging yourself". Or don't. It's just a suggestion.

Or, that's just my opinion. I've been wrong before. I don't see how I can be wrong. But then, people seldom do see how they are wrong, until they do. Heh.

It's been about 4 months... and posts like this have been around since before the release. The game isn't going to change dramatically enough for you to notice it. A level 81 character will always be overpowered. So, re-roll if you want a challenge. Or buy a different game, beat it, and complain about how that game was too easy too.

See my previous post I'm afraid that it comes down to money. But challenging yourself is free, and depends on no-one/nothing else but you.

Here's the solution. Lower the difficulty if you dont have the aptitude or are unwilling to build an effective character. Using the tools the game provides should not break the game which it does. Like I said. Dual Wielding alone is too much which means the game has balance issues.


An optional higher difficulty wont scare off the casual gamer.

This design has a lot of problems as well.

For starters, it eliminates the player's freedom to choose more or less difficult gameplay, it neutralizes the differences between different character builds, and it potentially eliminates the benefits of many of the perks. As it is, if I want to RP a 'normal' person, I use less powerful equipment and spells, choose fewer combat perks, etc., and the game becomes more challenging. If I want to RP a more powerful person, I craft better weapons and armor, use the best spells available, and put my perks into combat. In your design, this would no longer be an option.

If you scale the difficulty to every aspect of the character, you will experience very little, if any, variability in difficulty, regardless of your character's build and the equipment you use. Maybe that's how you would prefer to play the game, but if anything, it just seems like a more intense version of Oblivion's scaling mechanic. I, for one, would hate a scaling mechanic like this, so I don't see how it's an improvement on the current system. It would make my current build, which is designed to be as difficult as possible, impossible. It's just a different system that appeals to a different play-style. What's the point of using better weapons and armor and picking combat perks if the result is that your enemies become more powerful? Your perked out warrior will have as much difficulty in combat as your peace-loving merchant. At least with the current system enemies actually do feel tougher if you don't build your character for combat. The whole point of designing a good combat build is to be better at beating enemies than someone who doesn't. If there's no advantage to building your character this way, then there's effectively no differences between different builds. The same argument goes for improving your weapons and armor.

Also, how do you prevent players from exploiting it? I can just walk around in my street clothes with no weapons equipped, wait for the spawns, then equip anything I like. There's no way to reliably scale based on gear. You can say that those kinds of players are just spoiling the game for themselves and it won't affect the majority of players, but that's the same argument you can use against crafting. I don't abuse it, so it's never been unbalanced in my game. Ever.

And scaling against Health/Magicka/Stamina would accomplish nothing, though it might imbalance the game even more. These stats are approximately equivalent in value. If I have a high Stamina, I can carry more/better gear, sprint out of harm's way, and powerattack my way through enemies. (The people who think that Stamina is somehow a worse attribute to invest in are the people who've never invested in it.) Scaling against attributes wouldn't produce an effect that is different than scaling based on the player's level, since every character is going to have the same number of points based on level. Ie. it's a redundant mechanic.

Note that I'm not saying that the game doesn't have design issues (there are plenty) just that I don't think more scaling is the answer. The real problem is that there isn't enough of the right kind of alternate content. It's not viable to create a non-combat character because there isn't any content to support it. Stealthy characters don't need to have the difficulty scaled down to their level (after all, where's the excitement in sneaking past enemies you can easily defeat in combat?) they need content tailored to their skills and perks that is inaccessible to non-stealth characters, the way that bone-crushing free-for-alls are inaccessible to them.

thats well said. and if theres another

then basically its this v
"

Im in the mindset , that when u get to higher levels ur suppose to OP. I do agree it will be nice to have a challnge at higher levels, but cmon seriously. It boils down to, in this game u DONT have to have the perks to succeed, u take the perks to NOTICE a difference. I could beat the game as a duelweilding assassin and not put any points in the duel weild tree, BUT pointing points into those perks im WANTING to do 100%xdmg+50%xdmg+35%faster swing speed+30%xdmg, im wantign my charector who dosent need these perks, they just make the game easier, im wanting my toon to overkill on people. Thats how u are playing, ur not playing and saying "ow im not killing this guy, i need to put a point into raising my dmg up", no u saw all the + to dmg the perks would give ya and u amassed a huge amount of dmg from sneakign up on people anf fromt he front since every skill is leveled and ur complaining that ur oneshotting when u put the points into the tree when u didnt NEED them, u WANTED to do that much more dmg. Now u want a challenge because u didnt NEED theperks to begin with, if u didnt take them because u didnt NEED them, then we problemly wouldnt be having this conversation.

And no im not tellign u how to play ur game, if u wanted a challenge u woulda taken the perks ya needed, instead of being drawn in by the +etc%xdmg perks that u really didnt need because u were still killing stuff, u took the because it would make it easier on ya. So i really cnat wrap my mind around "i want a challenge so im gonna take these perks thats gonna make it EASIER on me". Ive beaten the game as sword and board at lvl 47, and only had 3 points in the +dmg to one handers and i think maybe 3 or for in the shield. It was tough, BUT i was killing [censored] so i didnt really NEED them and i had a challeneg all the way up but was able to survive. So alot of the perks u dont NEED to succeed, u WANTED them to make it easier on ya, and if ur making it easier on ya how is the game suppose to make the game hard when u keep tryign to make it easier?

So I can use my imagination to pretend that the game has branching dialogue options, consequences, and I can pretend there's an alignment slider in which NPC's give a crap about who and what you are. Sweet. Heck, I can take it further and save the $60, draw a picture of a dragon, and just look at it and pretend that it's an epic game.

This is where the real design issues are. There are scaling issues, but the real problem is the lack of meaningful alternatives.

You don't need to scale it to every variable of the player, nor do you need every enemy to do this.

You could, also, rather than go by the actual armor or damage ratings, go by skill levels and perks selected because those are set changes the game can easily measure and you can't unequip them. The game could then take into account your level, skill level, and perk and use that combination as a way to formulate whether or not some enemies should get an additional boost.

And this would just be for some enemies mind you, not all.

I feel the best system would have been to have most of the enemy populace, or at least around half, be comprised of "set level" enemies, for examples all Wolves will be level 3, 6, 10, and 15, meaning once you have surpassed level 15 no Wolf will ever be a danager to you. Then I believe that some enemies should always be leveled with the character to always be equal to their level, and finally some (the lowest population) of enemies should always be scaled to be at least a few levels higher than the player at all times.

With that in mind and balanced, then you can start adding in the extras of enemy armor, magic resist, damage, perks for themselves and how they might become harder versus how well the player is doing.

Okay...so now I'm yelling at you?

But back on topic. No...you don't have to "gimp" yourself, and you don't have to alter you character development. You can continue to play the game the way you have been. That doesn't affect me any more than Bethesda adding a new difficulty setting.

You don't have to do anything. But you can choose to do something different. You just don't want to.

In Bethesda's TES history, they have never, ever, not once added or deleted anything affecting the gameplay or gaming mechanics. I don't anticipate them doing that in Skyrim either.

You can wait and see what happens if you want...that doesn't affect me. Or you can....like I said earlier...take advantage of the mechanics that the game already has and adjust yourself.

The solution to your "problem" is already here.

Your choice.

Except that it's not a solution, but rather pretending that the problem doesn't exist.

A solution would be a balance change that would alter combat such that builds that are currently OP no longer would be. For example: If I assassinate someone his/her buddies are completely clueless about it, and I can assassinate them, too, as each one comes to look at the new corpse(s); in a rebalanced system, however, hanging around would nearly guarantee discovery and retaliation, thus requiring actual planning in order to avoid detection. Hell, the original assassination would have been harder to pull off as well.

Other methods for increasing combat difficulty: high resistances/immunities to various elemental damage (or even magic as a whole), enemies having high armor ratings, enemies getting the same OP Block perks we do, mace-wielders getting the anti-armor perks, enemy archers getting sneak critical bonuses, etc. They could even have special abilities, such as an anti-magic aura or a combat speed bonus, (more) shouts, etc. Yes, some of this could probably be done via mods, however doing it properly is best left to the professionals, as some of it requires a complete rewrite of the combat AI (which it needs anyway, since as-is it svcks).

As I've said before, the developers have the job of providing challenge in a game. The player shouldn't have to create the challenge. There simply is no defense to having overpowered abilities in any game, ever, except of course for "we can't play-test every possible scenario". That's entirely understandable; I've never been one to complain that the game had bugs at release. My only desire is to see that the bugs and balance issues get fixed, now that use in the field has brought some of them to light.

Saying "it's up the players" implies that it's the player's job to make the game challenging, and that there's absolutely nothing wrong with a game where even the hardest levels are easy for some people...which is patently ridiculous.


Well said. Limitations due to your character concept are one thing, but having to refrain from playing the game to the hilt in order to avoid killing the challenge is unacceptable. Imagine if you were playing an RTS and there was a certain unit that, if you built it, you would beat a match against the toughest-difficulty AI in five minutes, because the AI wasn't programmed very well at all regarding that particular unit? Would you say "Oh well, I guess I shouldn't use that unit, it's up to me to create a challenge in the game" or would you say "the developer didn't do a very good job balancing their units in this game and the AI needs work."


Very well said.