Hello!

Let's get the introduction, and the obvious, out of the way: I am a new-comer to the forums and to modding in general; I bring a hobbyist's skill-set in programming and a long-running interest in game design and game balance to the table, which hopefully makes up for my lack of artists' skills. This thread was started so that I can reach out and hopefully get some insights from more experienced players and modders.

I plan to use one of my mods to tackle a perceived problem with combat scaling. (It will be completely independent of magic -- while I'd like to touch up on it a bit, I think Mighty Magic does a far better job that what I could ever do, and I don't want to go re-inventing the wheel if I don't have to.) Basically, I feel that most of the game's scaling and balance problems could almost be dealt with by simply looking at the fact that combat skill grows exponentially and quickly becomes over-powering.

If you agree with this, what are some of the things that you'd want to see in a mod that attempts to address it? Is there any research already done on the actual combat outputs with levels and perks?

I'm already in the process of planning the following changes (or seeing if they're even possible):

• Placing a hard cap on skill gain from stacking spells, enchantments, and potions so that skills do not exceed 110. (Alternatively, BASE SKILL + 30 points or 110, whichever is lower, or something similar -- this is to keep lower level characters effectively low level, without killing the usefulness of pots, spells, and enchants.)
  
• Completely reworking the perk trees. I realize this will destroy compatibility with any other perk-tree-altering mod. I'll post my exact plans for this somewhere when I'm ready for comments/tweaking, but the gist of it involves scaling back stacking percentages (instead of doing 2x damage, you may only do 1.5x), swapping out some effects to prevent repetitious stacking, and making it more difficult to attain top-tier abilities without having put in the dedication to earn them.
  
• Investigating potential ways to reduce level scaling on weapons & armor, or rebalance these within the game to compensate..or both. (This would create the need for players to choose weapons more carefully and stop adventuring all willy-nilly; it can also break just about any mod that attempts to alter or add new weapons without a hand-crafted patch.)
  
• Do something about that silly squat-and-magically-disappear-in-combat mechanic.

Input? Suggestions? Worldy wisdom?

I would not use any mod with this feature. One of my most essential, must-have mods in any Elder Scrolls game is a skill/attribute uncapper. If I only played with one Skyrim mod it would probably be Elys Community Uncapper mod.

Uncapping skills and attributes allows a player to specialize and continue to progress. My current warrior has a weapon skill of well over 100, but no magic or sneak skills whatever. I can continue to see modest progress with this character and still retain my character's uniqueness. If skills were capped one of two things would happen: 1) my character's progress would come to a screeching halt or 2) my character would become a jack-of-all-trades. Neither of these prospects are appealing to me.




I have no idea what do you mean by this. Can you explain?



Maybe it's because I've never played a mage, but I don't know what you mean by this either.

If you sneak in combat after getting out of sight your enemies (Just around the corner seems to do fine in most cases) start looking for you and eventually give up looking for you. It doesn't take much skill or time to do this either. Once you get them to start 'searching' for you its pretty easy to get away and come back for a sneak-attack bonus.

The idea of the capper was not to halt players who began to reach maximum skills, but to put a stop to a lot of the off-kilter stacking. What is your opinion on the alternative I suggested, that the bonuses be capped instead? Rather than a 110 hard cap for achievement/leveling, have a soft cap that limits pots/spells/enchants from raising your base skills too high?

I favored the hard cap because I believe that the game doesn't expect you to really exceed 100 in a particular skill, and it is balanced against that expectation. (Many NPCs, for example, have hard caps at less than half that, in their 40's.) Would you feel negatively about a mod that slowed down level progression or raised the exponent curve, so that each skill point was a greater achievement?





As Pwin explained, if you are playing a stealth character, it becomes incredibly easy to exit out of combat should you get into trouble, even at low levels. When I was playing a thief, even at moderate levels (12-15+), the sneak button just became an "I win" button. Coupled with damage bonuses from sneak attacks, you're forced to wonder how the Dark Brotherhood could have possibly fallen on hard times.