So, me and my big brother are enjoying Skyrim very much. Well, at least one of us.

My brother have played Elder Scrolls since Morrowind, and I have grown up by his side as he explored the regions of Tamriel. This, of course, added some expectations to Skyrim. And apparently, he's not amused.

He claims that the game is too easy. He's playing on Master and have concluded that the only class that isn't invincible is the Assassin, and even with that one it's almost too easy if you level smithing and enchanting.

So, I have a question for you guys. Do you agree that the game is too easy? If so, would you like Bethesda or a standalone modder/mod group to make a difficulty somewhat related to the hardcoe mode in Fallout New Vegas, or at least a difficulty above Master?

How about you tell him to not level enchanting and smithing? See how difficult he finds that.

hardcoe Mode in New Vegas was not the right kind of difficulty. Just because you deal less damage and enemies deal more, does not make the game challenging in a good way. Just because you have to trivial maintenance things like repair a weapon, eat, and sleep - again does not make the game challenging in a good way. My problem also isn't that Master isn't "hard" it is that difficulty does not scale appropriately. There is an enormous gap between player strength and enemy strength the more you level, to the point where it is rather silly. Your only option is to try to not level up and intentionally gimp yourself, which is hard for any true player to ever do and should not have to do. They just need to give the players more control over how enemies scale and improve the AI greatly. Difficulty settings should not only increase enemy damage and decrease yours, but Elite versions (boss mobs) need to spawn more regularly, encounter size needs to increase, AI needs to be improve, enemies need more skills/spells at their disposal and so forth. The fact that I do not change my tactics on any difficulty, is a problem.

Don't know about you guys, but I'm finding Master pretty bloody hard.

My brother agrees. But how would this be achievable?

You're beating a dead horse!


Bethesda needs to put a cap on enchanting and smithing and make some stronger baddies in order for this problem to be solved.

Untill then I suggest you avoid enchanting all together, don't even use one perk on it. Smithing is not that bad if you stop at flawless, maybe use your shield more for protection.

I find adept to be hard at some points :/

Very simple. You create rulesets that are in-game options. City of Heroes achieved this by being able to set the enemy level offset from you (meaning if you wanted enemies to always be +10 levels above you, you could - or even if you wanted to make them always below you if you were hitting a rough patch). In addition, there would be an option to increase the maximum potential number of enemies in an encounter (this does not mean Frost Trolls would always be in packs of say 4, but have the CHANCE of being in a pack of 4). Turning on Elite or Boss spawns means that in any given encounter a Boss/Elite enemy has a chance of spawning (so instead of only 1 Bandit Chief in the entireeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee fort, you could have ~20).

PISE mod further has given the player control over options to make the game even more difficult, like toning down the effectiveness of Stealth and rebalancing skills.

I find adept pretty hard in places.

Right now I feel like master provides a pretty good challenge at level 31, in most places at least. Obviously if I find a cave full of bandits they are still going to be short work. I'm not using enchanting or smithing, and i'm playing an assassin. I have heard though that as you level the difficulty from master gets less:(

One thing though, the problem really isn't the difficulty exactly, it's the the variance in difficulty is too great even between similar foes, i've been in dungeons pretty routinely where I can one or two shot most of the enemies, but the boss can put me down in seconds.

Then you think bethesda add enchanting and smiting without making the difficult of the game adapt of this thing?
Think before talking, bethesda make the game with enchating and smithing then they want to make the game like he is now, cut off crafting skill isn't the solution, bethesda or modder must add more challenging enemies/quest based on the game and not cutting parts of the game, too many things are cutted for the past game i think is enough.

One thing your brother can try, turn off the HUD as well..it really adds to the immersion and the difficulty, you don't know the level range of enemies you're fighting, and also you don't have prior knowledge of "oh there's a town coming up" so exploration is more fun as well.

Enemies scale slowly because they're locked in at certain level brackets. Therefore:

There will be a point at which enemies will ANNIHILATE you.

There will be a point at which enemies are equally matched with you.

There will be a point at which enemies cry at the sight of you.

And doesn't that make sense? As you level up and become more powerful, things should and do become easier. As to just how much easier they become, that depends on how you create your character. Leveling enchanting and smithing is part of the road to becoming a demi-god.

It wasn't made so that you could spam both of them to create weapons with 1000+ damage.

Bethesda create this thing , then they known ppl can create this weapon, then they want ppl create this ppl, but they don't create enemy can survive to this thing, you notice the error bethesda do?

Otherwise the game is easy without using the "exploit"(isn't a real exploit bethesda create this) , but only creating an armor and enchanting this and without using more of 75% of reduce mana cost or 40% damage of one handed (this is the enchant i made on my mage and warrior on max difficult the other are resistance or mana or life), then without using "exploit" is simple but is bethesda want to make game simple, with or without "exploit".

Maybe the reason is to make game playable to all or make the game lesser frustrating i don't known, but this is the game bethesda create with all the stuff they putted inside, if they want give to us more challeging thing with dlc i "happy", if they don't want and give us something with the same difficult of the base game i happy too the game is good.

This is the game bethesda want to give us, with all the stuff they putted inside, they give us the possibility to choice what use for make our character , then there isn't thing must be cutted because bethesda want them are in the game.

Sorry for the terrible english.

Yes, it was.

The game is too easy but the solution isn't adding a higher difficulty. The solution is to make Smithing/Enchanting/Alchemy actually balanced.

hardcoe mode was perfect for me. It added some elements/gameplay mechanics that old timers like myself enjoy, but the gamers of today just brush away as "tedious". It didn't make the game "harder", there was a difficulty setting you could use in addition to hardcoe mode. I don't like the name "hardcoe" very much at all, I think it should be called "enhanced gameplay" or "additional mechanics" or something, "hardcoe" seems to imply something completely different.

Agree on the second part though; on master it starts of extremely difficult where you have to flee from many foes (which I still find to be fun), goes via maneagable (when depends on build I guess), to ridiculously easy once you gain high levels. For me the problem is that, even if I'm using the game I try not to exploit anything, the leveling progress is too fast. Maybe a mod that only adds +5/+2 rather than +10 to barstats every level would help? I would then have to rely more on my defensive skills (armor for a fighter) than let the body be able to absorb any kind of damage. If traps ignore armor, I may still have to worry about them at high levels unless I got the pressure plate perk.

Or just some simple slider where I can adjust the leveling speed which for me personally is way too fast.

A quick balancing on the crafting would be to avoid the possibility to grind low level stuff to gain skill experience, which only makes sense. For those who still want to gain high levels but without perking it, they would have to rely on trainers to get there. Now we have a forced money sink, which is also needed.

0-30 Smithing: Iron dagger grinding is allowed.
31-60 Smithing: Have to grind advanced armors.
61-90 Smithing: Produce dragon armors, or enhance magic armor.
91-100 Smithing: Only daedric grinding takes you further (hard, due daedra heart requirement).
(adjust the values so they make sense in the skill tree, I don't recall them here).

0-30 Alchemy: Grind anything.
31-60 Alchemy: You need to create potions with two effects to advance.
61-90 Alchemy: You need to create potions with three effects to advance.
91-100 Alchemy: Only potions with three effects that also include a daedra heart.

I haven't used enchanting so I don't know how that works. Another option is to half the speed of advancement, and half the perk requirements (so they can be picked earlier, where you "max out" at 50), combined with a exponential growth slowing down in gaining speed - pretty much eliminating the chance of reaching 100 in any skill. You still get the bonus from skill increases and the sensation of progress from using that skill, but you no longer feel "forced" to skilling up, it's more a natural thing. This "need to reach 100" is ruining role playing, it really shouldn't be a focus at all.

If you have to self gimp to enjoy the game then the game is seriously unbalanced. I hope Bethesda takes time to address balancing issues.

The problem with that system is that on a lvl scaling basis it would never work, even if you increase the amount of bosses per lvl it means nothing to the player as he would still be able to overcome that obstacle by lvling crafting skills or enhancing combat skills. the real problem is lack of death, for example the frost troll on the way to throat of the world hes hard aint he? died the first time? that troll alone gives the player a sense of danger within the world its somthing that he cannot surpass which is a static lvl beyond his own no matter how much he improves that troll will always be hard to kill, im not saying that the game should be static but there should be more varied levels that scale according to your own which slowly decreases per lvl, so at lvl 1 a frost troll is 10 when your lvl 10 the frost troll is 20 at lvl 15 the frost troll is 22 at lvl 22 the frost troll is 25, sort of thing.

See the harder the game is the more realistic it becomes even if its just enemies get stronger and you get weaker, that looming sense of death is what really makes the hardcoe, hardcoe mode players jump for joy, an example is gears of war, on casual you dont even need cover you can run right up to a locust and chainsaw everyone of em. on insane mode, you use every peice of cover you get, you never chainsaw, you find yourself using bommers and snipers at long range because if you get close you die.

so in a way skyrim is doing it right, but like i have said in almost every post, this new system skyrim runs on is new to bethesda so giving it time with DLC and patches or the next game, it will deffinitly get better