Did you not read my previous post that you replied to, explaining all the little ways you can game a dragon's weaknesses in their behavior? Nevermind that, once you ground one...they generally fail to pursue you and stand around, letting you hide behind a rock or down a hill almost indefinitely, while allowing plenty of room to heal between all their attacks.

Pure Destruction/Alteration/Restoration Mage on Master Difficulty equals 10-20 minute Dragon Battles.

There is a reason the aspiring swordmasters in Cyrodiil can no longer miss like their Morrowind counterparts

If you already know everything, then doing something is a trivial matter. You already know the AI behavior, and decided to exploit them, if you STILL don't win, then it's NOT a challenge: it's a mockery, "Hey, you can never beat this random jerk you nuts!", and thus a very bad design.

You would certainly be pleased with the sadism that you call "challenge", but those who want to play and not be a master strategist do not need such luck. Is there even any point in preparation if everything will eventually fail due to some Godly intervention? Which can only be avoided by pure luck?

Some people grow with Super Mario Bros and Megaman (and Contra), and I respect that, but games these days are meant to be fun, to be pastime, not to be a dedicated job. Trying to make something uber hard only to cater to the most sadistic of gamers is not a good design. Difficulties should be an opt-in system, not an opt-out. First impression is very important, and so is self-confidence. Going with the "Hey, I'm pretty good at this, I'll try the harder guys" approach is better than "HOLY CHRIST THESE GUYS ARE F***ING NUTS, I'M OUTTA THIS THING" approach

Most certainly, you don't want the monsters in the first area to be Master Necromancers the first time you get out of Helgen

Well most of those points weren't helpful at all, some were wrong. So yeah I ignored that.

With 0 resistances on master, if you are hit by their elemental attacks, you will die. They fail to pursue you, only when they fight other enemies, so you aren't fighting them on your own? It's easy to kill anything if they aren't focusing on you. If you are right up in their face, they will focus on you and with your 0% resistance and armor rating, they will kill you instantly.

So yeah you still haven't given a decent explanation to how you are killing these dragons. What level are you, what dragons are you killing (elder/ancient etc), and what weapons do you use?

Why do they land and bite you? Hunger.

But that's the thing, not every dragon should behave the same. Enemies should not fall into easy patterns, as it reveals to us that they really are robots. I'm not saying you should randomly die for some stupid reason, but that enemies should have a chance to do somethings out of order, or completely unexpected from their predicted behavior. No matter how good you are at doing something, you can always make a mistake, or get unlucky.



That's the problem. People are too lazy and catered to nowdays. People these days, if its too hard they give up. What happened to trying harder? Trying a different strategy? Or coming back better prepared? Again, there 5 difficulty settings for this game right now, two of which are completely worthless because there is no way anyone can really be that terrible to need them unless you are letting your 5 year old kid play it or something.

Where there is no chance to fail, there is no chance to excel.

I am using a Dragonbane. As I said, yes I can turn up the difficulty, but why? So ONE enemy can be "balanced"? I've fought mudcrabs more fearsome than elder dragons. I also have zero magical resistance. I just dragon rend it, it lands and I slash it to death. What I meant by "facing them as they were designed to be" is that on normal, they are as they are. Going on any lower difficulty makes them easier, anything higher makes them harder. A pack of mud crabs could wipe out an unprepared Dovahkiin on Master, so judging a creatures balance on Master is kind of hard. I'm just saying, I have a tougher go against Draugr Deathlords and various other bosses compared to dragons.

I'm level 37, with two ebony swords, killing elders. They die in under 15 seconds once grounded. I have 0 perks in archery, or any form of magic. I have no self enchanted gear, and am still wearing the dark brotherhood/thieves guild stuff. I don't use poisons, and almost exclusively use cooked food, not potions to heal. I have 0 companions or summons, no horse.

The first statement is indeed true: every enemy should not be the same, but once you gathered information on them and exploit their behavior, everything will repeat themselves again: you'll complain because you followed Sun Tzu's Art of War

There is actually no point in excelling in gaming. Excelling in Starcraft in Korea may get you somewhere, but excelling in killing dragons in Tamriel?

You should not have to be a master strategist to finish a single player game. You need to master every aspect in a competitive PvP environment, but when you're in a single player PvE game, every form of "a lot of careful planning" should be thrown out of the window and given only for the select few who really want them.

Some people simply want to have fun, after working so hard to get that $60 to buy the game. Some other people, who have spent $2000 for a Stereoscopic 3D-Triple-1080p-screen setup would want some REAL challenge, the masochistic challenge that can only be felt in 8-bit era. I respect the feeling, as at some point in my life I have wanted some more challenge, something more than is being offered. But, again, games are meant to be fun, to be played. If you have to squeeze every inch of your brain to play a game, either you're doing it wrong or the developers had gone nuts

One word, improvisation.


I disagree. It's a lack of refinement in gameplay. It's naturally a given, that some people will play better than others, however there is little point to it when what is already there, is balanced around a very low barrier of entry, and rudimentary playing ability. You should always balance for potential. You don't ignore something Just because not everyone can do it, the fact that you even can needs to be weighted and taken into account against a middle ground, rather than the bare bottom or absolute top.

Some people find shallow, effortless gameplay hollow and devoid of fun. Are you implying that it is impossible for something to be fun and challenging? Once again, there are 5 difficulty settings. There is no reason for the absolute hardest difficulty to be so lazily designed with purely parameter based increases, instead of Ai and mechanical/encounter adjustments. What is there simply is not adequate, and the game becomes too easy, across all difficulty settings simply by making halfway optimal character progression choices.

But I do believe we have derailed the topic enough already.

I agree with re123's points however Raestloz I don't understand yours. From your point of view you sound like you want more of a PVP enviroment if that's teh case Skyrim isn't for you. I have met ice/fire/shock mages more fearsome than an ancient dragon and I actually have to plan for how I'm going to kill them. I'm not a warrior and I do not run in immiediatly to get killed

Instead I make sure I have some healing potions on top of my healing spells as well as mana pots. I usually aim a fire rune near them and run away. When they blow up they give chase but sinc eI'm already gone and found a place to hide they return to where they were. I rather not be in the middle of 5 ice storms, 2+ dead and a necromancer master + Ice Mage Adept. I think a group like that would make short work of an unprepared adventurer even one with 900+ health at around lvl 81.

You still have to prepare for PVE just as much as PVP. There are games simalar to Rohan where spells are catered more to PVE on account of they can be more powerful and potent than a vast majority of players and they are not even a boss. As such those skills are strong and lax weak PVP'ers complain about those skills on a forum. Myself I think Dragons DO need to be tougher and be what re123 says they should be as they are very predicatable and very stupid.

There are various times to plan before going adventurer. If you're expecting a dragon bring fire and frost resistance. If you're going to a mage hidey-hole bring shock resistance too. Make sure you always bring health potions on top of stamina/mana potions. They are life saviors especially when you will die before you can cast a heal it's happend to me before.

I want to have fun true but I also like to strategize because at 120 HP I can die so easily.

For a fairly high-level warrior-type character what would be surprising to have max-effective-AV and good resistances??

With Heavy Armor + Smithing it's pretty trivial to crank up your AV so that you're at max-effective-AV. 80% physical damage resistance is nothing to laugh at. Not only is it easy but it would be perfectly in character for most "tanks".

As for Magic Resistance & Elemental Resistances it's easy to crank these up with Enchanting. If you don't like Enchanting [because it's not warrior-ish] it's still easy to get 40% MR with no MR equipment at all. The Shield of Solitude with a 30% MR would get you to 70% easily. Combine this with a potion of MR, a potion of elemental resistance, etc. and you can tank up fairly well. Once again I find characters that do this perfectly reasonable.

Finally if you've got some Restoration Magic or access to good potions a warrior's health shouldn't be too much of a concern.

Using the above basic combination with basic "hit them until they die ... heal yourself as needed" tactics there should be very few encounters that would even make this warrior blink [until Master difficulty].

While I don't mind that so much with most creatures a Dragon on "Expert" difficulty shouldn't get PWNed with such a trivial build and virtually non-existant tactics.


IMHO the Dragon Level Scaling function should look at what AV, MR, Resistances you can easily get to [by drinking potions or using perks or whatever] and base the Dragon's capabilities off of that. This way at least Dragons might stand a chance against a [high level] vanila character using uninspired tactics on Expert level.

Which is impossible to do with artificial intelligence powered at best by a hexa-core CPU. At most you will only find that enemies do not fling attacks at the same pattern, but once you make the sufficient preparation, not even the power of randomness can do much. You will find yourself preparing for the randomness itself and try to counter it, which will bring you victorious in the end, and by that point you will want even more challenge, and the cycle continues .


Like I said, such challenges should be opt-in instead of opt-out. Schools do not treat every student as an Olympic-level physics master, but rather give them the same education material for average level students. And the select few who do show talent and are willing to take the challenge will be given extraordinary treatment, which I think is the best example of my idea.

I never said that games should never be difficult, what I'm saying is a difficult game should not be what everybody gets, but rather everybody gets the "easy" version by default, and for those who want extra challenge (like you) there is an in-game switch to transform it into "hard" version

If you read my posts above carefully, i never said anything close to what you say I said. here are my points:

• By default, games should not require the brain of Einstein and the reflexes of Hanzo Hattori to finish
  
• There are versions of the game that require those, but they are not what everybody gets by default
  
• There is no point in being able to do anything perfectly in a single player game, as virtually nobody will be there to praise your accomplishments, and it will not benefit you in real life
  
• Being able to do anything perfectly in a game and STILL benefit you in real life is only applicable to competitive multiplayer games
  
• You should prepare for things to come, but you should not, by default, have to micromanage every single detail
• If you managed to execute them perfectly but STILL fail because of some Godly intervention called Luck, then something must have gone horribly wrong during the game development

Then I'll just have to leave it to either you being the better player, or a serious screw up on my part in building my character.

I'm under 300 armor rating in Heavy Armor (not heavily perked, and not all pieces are heavy), 0 resistance with the exception of the Atronach Stone's absorption mechanic, no enchantments, and I'm merely on expert.
Dragon bites take 90% of my HP away, and one full duration of any breath (heck, even a quarter of that) is enough to put me down. While I do agree that they are prone to predictable patterns and staggering, neither of these seem to work in a way that allows me to take advantage of them.

I consciously chose to heavily boost my character's hit points in response to my choice in wearing only light armor, and I move and reposition myself alot during combat. I am using the steed stone simply for more carrying capacity, I have nearly 400 hit points at level 37, and I dual wield swords, so no 15x sneak attacks or shield blocking for me.

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Ancient_Dragon

Play on Master and see if a 3071 HP dragon still looks easy to you if you fight with no followers. But yes, there are just too many dragons around and the average dragon look somewhat weak. One can also argue that they land too often but it's just for the sake of gameplay, I can't see how a melee character would be supposed to take a dragon down otherwise.

So unless you play the game on the hardest setting people have no right to complain? Get out of here with that nonsense.

3071 hp, and 0 armor rating.

I wouldn't beat yourself up [or praise anyone else] at this point.

What level are you? What type of character are you running??

If it matters I ran into the same problems early on and lasting until my mid 20s.

Dragons should be the toughest things in the game to kill and much rarer

Phasing out the weaker dragons sooner would help. I'm not sure how the leveled lists work, but I was surprised (and disappointed) that I was still encountering normal dragons at higher levels. Also, maybe Bethesda should fix whatever's going wonky with how they spawn. I hardly meet any when avoiding fast-travel, but they spawn like crazy after using map travel a couple of times.

I don't think Dragons should be much rarer but I do agree that a single Dragon should be able to beat [at once] the next 2-3 toughest creatures in the game.

Because if they were super hard to kill some body else would be on here asking why they are so hard to kill.

Personally like like to see dragons start to recruit people into their cults, leaving you to fight dragon cultists who haven't been dead for 3000 years.


Master setting doesn't make it smarter or make more sense, it just ups the hitpoint bar and damage. It would still fly around stupidly, and not use shouts beyond the breath attack.

IMO its ridiculous to complain that something is to easy, if you have the option to make it harder, turn up the difficulty and stop whining.

They use the unrelenting force shout, the breath fire/ice thing they do, they also use the fire shout that you have (like a pulse of fire). I assume they use a few more as well, those are the ones I've seen.