It seems to me Alduin is a wimpy dragon who could have easily been killed by the people of Skyrim and that there was no need for a Dragon-born, the final battle against him was so easy that towards the end i cranked it up to expert just so I'd have a challenge.

Also i beat him at level eleven.

Nice. Well that wa another dissapointment in the main quest. i was expecting absolute death for myself. Unfortunatly i killed him straight off the block. Wish he was harder. But i find master difficulty to un realistic with how long it takes to kill things

Well wouldnt it be better to fight it yourself then (SPOILERS) the songarde heros? They made it easy for the boss fight.

This is what happens when you scale enemies to the player-character's level so players can rush through the storyline and beat it while their character is still weak.

...

Honestly, I sometimes think Bethesda take this "complete player freedom" thing too far. Freedom to roam around the gameworld without running into invisible walls or locked areas? Great. Freedom to make a completely unique character that doesn't have a set personality or background? Wonderful. Freedom to avoid the main questline entirely or stop midway through without worrying about timers? Fantastic. Freedom to beat every questline and every opponent at almost any level, completely undermining the believability of the gameworld as well as the power of certain enemies? Stupid. Preventing the player-character from being able to fail is too much freedom. They should be able to fail if they're too weak, and be forced to try again later.

Agreed to a certain extent. If the game has one of those "Once you go here you cannot leave until you progress the storyline" areas, I sorta feel it should be locked out until you reach a certain level or something. I explore a lot in games, and in some of them I've found myself in areas I apparently wasn't supposed to be in yet because I was weak and the enemies could punch out God, and I couldn't get out of the area until I won, which was impossible. There wasn't any indication that I couldn't leave the area or that it was anything out of the ordinary before I got there, but after I got there it was like the game just would not let up.

If you can get out of areas like that, wonderful. I love finding those areas when I'm weak early on, because it feels so good to come back when you're nearly invincible and crush everything. But if the game decides you're trapped there, then I have a problem.

Thing is, Alduin is a pushover even at master difficulty at level 57.

They should have made Alduin unbeatable until the final dlc of the game, while making the main quest chain into each one beforehand...requiring a level of progression before seeing the relevant parts of the main quest sections in each dlc. That way, they could set his statistics up to expect players to be at a specific point of progression/experience to fight him. It makes more sense to me, that the dragonborn would only be strong enough to beat him at the absolute height of their power, and at the technical end of their story...rather than what actually happened.

That and, they should have honestly coded him to do more than just the same old stuff every other dragon does. Scaling down bosses is stupid as well, if anything they should always be scaled up to remain worthy of being called a boss. No matter how someone tries to rationalize it, a low level, unseasoned dragonborn has no business defeating Alduin, no matter what some prophecy says.

This is what confuses me though, I made a new character for shiggles yesterday and decided he was to be a pure Nord warrior. I was on my way to Ivarstead when I fell down a mountain and ended up in a place called Dark Grove? Shady Grove? Something like that. Anyway, I'm level 4 or 5 and inside this cave there was a troll. Going by your logic (which we both share) I figured he'd be rather easy to take down. I hit him with my mace and it does like, no damage. Then he heals back for what I just hit him almost instantly. I literally did not have enough firepower to take this thing down, then his buddy shows up after about 5 minutes of me whacking at this thing and I have to book on out of there. I play on Expert on my low levels, and Master on my Main Character.

Edit: It seems like the level scaling is really inconsistent at times.

Good post.

Welcome to Skyrim where everything is handed to you on a plate with the minimum of effort.

Some enemies don't scale and are always set levels (think giants) bosses should be under this category but bethesda didn't want people who rushed through the storyline and ignored the entire game to be punished

As I've said before, the game is still way too scaled, but a giant improvement over oblivion. It it bothers me that suddenly all wild life except for cave bears and frost trolls have gone exstinct.

As for alduin. Throughout the entire mainquest he feels like some bully dragon who just happens to claim to be a god. He doesn't actually feel like a god at all, he more feels like a slightly stronger dragon with an ego problem.

Bandit Thugs = Damn near impossible to beat with an unimproved Imperial sword.

Alduin = Damn near impossible to lose to with an unimproved Imperial sword.

(I play on Adept.)

I think if you crank it up to expert during the climatic boss battles it would be more realistic im going to do that for now on.

I am now for the first time balancing Bethesdas games for them.

I do however find Bandits easier then Alduin but i know what you mean.

Scaling enemies svcks. The TES games are the only ones were leveling up is a bad thing. Although Oblivion was worse in this, Skyrim still svcks regarding scaling.
Also the difference in healthpoints/damage between the different types of enemies svcks. I can oneshot a Draugr, kill a Draugr Wraith with two hits but the Deathlords in turn can oneshot me.

Also the totally lack of basic stats is stupid, so you are forced to use percentage values, this is a bad idea because it can get too powerfull easily.
Gothic3 had a nice balancing and scaling (after Community Patches fixed the bugs). No scaling, basic stats, no respawn -> max playerlevel.

One I'd my main problems is that they give you help. Why do I need help for when he died in a minute. I'm never one to complain on such things but I felt the guy from oblivion was harder and he was mortal. It is like a reverse of normal boss fight set ups, the player has a huge advantage. As for the no return point we got a warning so most people would if had a backup save I figure.

Alduin was a huge disappointment, even on Master...

I figure Alduin's 'death' is questionable at this point. On one hand, we didn't absorb his soul, but, on the other hand, we defeated him in Sovngarde so he may have already been in 'soul form' and we couldn't get it there.

The enemy scaling should be handled something like this:

Scale them absolutely on Novice-Adept - like the game is currently coded.

Limited scaling on Expert and Master. They could do this in such a way that on Master you would have to have a follower who's leveled and well-equipped to defeat bosses or at least Alduin. They could also 'lock' certain zones by setting enemies' minimum levels to be too high for us to go there at lower levels. I'm not a fan of invisible blocking objects; I realize they have to limit the map at the edges, but that could be handled by large boulders that haven't been 'dug through' for centuries.

Personally, I like to be overpowered at higher levels because I earn it via Smithing, Enchanting, et al (on my first character at least - on subsequent one sometimes I just want to be a tourist. ). That being said, with five difficulty levels I would think Bethesda could tweak the AI and scaling a bit differently than the standard character is weaker and enemies are stronger at higher difficulty levels.

Edited for usage.

Alduin is the catalyst. The leader of the dragons he awakens.

...and yet, he dies, so easily.


Why didn't they just make him like.. 20x harder than an Elder Dragon.

I'd like to point out that it's entirely possible to beat Alduin at level 1. Encounters scale to your level so you don't get rolfstomped by a passing rabbit.

Also, nowhere near the first time in a TES game that an endboss fight has been underwhelming, but honestly there's not a whole hell of a lot of variety they can add with the combat system. May as well make it look pretty though.

they could have gave Alduin new shouts more health, etc. and I'm sure the fight would have felt different. Sometimes little differences can seem like a lot.

He should have had at least 10 shouts to use, on unlinked timers.

And about his difficulty combat wise, its disappointing they didnt get creative with his script.

I would have at the very least...

1. Made all his attacks deal an armor/resist ignoring percentage of player's max health per hit.
2. Set Alduin's hp to always be same as the player's health, but with 95% damage reduction.
3. Make him deal 200% more damage to anything that is not the player.
4. Make dragonrend last 1/2 as long on him.
5. Make droagr, dragon priests, and skeletal dragons spawn to distract the player. If they aren't all killed in time, he absorbs them and heals to full.
6. He never loses the ability to fly, he staggers 1/2 as much, and needs 2x as much damage to stagger.
7. Every minute he is alive, he gets stronger.

etc

I understand where you're coming from, but that's just kinda been the dance with Bethesda on TES endbosses for...well, at least since Morrowind. It's easier to say to enjoy the trip there rather than the fight or to turn the difficult up, yeah, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing to people. I'm just an easy-going ladyfolk I suppose.

I have to agree with this, I'm all for some form of Scaling and Skyrim does it well for the most part but there are some areas that will leave your head scratching. Alduin is certainly one of them, easily the biggest fail boss ever in my opinion. Hell Mankar Cameron was a much better boss fight. Only solution I can see is to do it like Fallout New Vegas, have the boss be at a higher level like 30-40 or something similar.

My first encounter with a True boss-class Dragon Priest was 100x harder than Alduin. It didn't help that he had 2 Death Overlords (Archers to boot) Shouting the hell out of me. Now that was a boss fight.

Alduin was this really cool encounter that was underscored by hitting him 2 or 3 times and winning. I guess you could argue "It was ur destiny brah" but still... Was it my destiny to get killed by a bandit with a warhammer 2hours before fighting "The greatest threat to Tamriel since Mehrunes Dagon"?

Considering they have a Difficulty Scale that can be set at any time, anywhere, I'm surprised Bethesda doesn't just overshoot their difficulty. Maybe I'm old school, but a game that's too easy on the hardest difficulty is worse than a game that's too hard on the easiest.

A lot of this isn't just difficult, but easily exploitable AI, Stealth in particular, but I think I'm just pissin' in the wind now.