Yes... another difficulty thread. Here we are in 2012 with games that are truly wonderful and beautiful technological achievements... and we are still using 1980's ideas as to how we increase the challenge in them. I shouldn't say ideas but rather idea and that is, making the bad guy harder to kill and/or making you easier to kill.

We have all heard thru the various threads the different ways they could change this (some good, some bad), but I wonder why in an immersive, complex world such as Skyrim it all still boils down to simple damage output.

Those of you out there who are or have worked on game programming and such, how much more elaborate or difficult would it be to take some exsisting game mechanics (like sneak/perception) and lower/raise the values based upon the difficulty level the gamer chooses? For instance, mob AI already has a perception check that happens based on how good your sneak level is (plus various perks)... so how hard is it to change that based upon level of difficulty?

On adept, I can slay a wolf from 50 yds away with a single arrow. Too simple? Perhaps. On Expert, the same wolf can take 3 to the face and still nibble on me before I can kill him. On Master, his howl alone will rend the flesh from my bones ala Black Bolt. Very big disparity there. Tedium does not equal challenge in my book.

I know this is basically an invite for every internet tough guy to tell me how master is easy mode and QQ and such. For everyone else who responds... thank you.

I never have nor i never will play on Master. I think at apprentice/Adept i have enough challenge as it is. On Adept a bandit chief can still bring you down easily, yet i dont mind being able to hack through his minions more easily. In fact id go as far to say that apprentice is more of a 'fair' mode being that it will take a few more hits for obviously overpowered enemies to take you down. If im the DragonBorn, playing as a Warrior with good equipment, i shouldnt need a follower and abuse of shouts to finish off a bandit leader... Completely makes me feel underpowered. I also refuse to level things like enchanting and smithing to get me insanely overpowered stuff. I like the difficulty coming in number of enemies im encountering at once, not one insanely strong enemy

I think without question it’s VERY possible to do. Mods for other Beth games like Arwen’s Realism Tweaks and FWE for Fallout 3 did an incredible job of tweaking stuff. I’m sure that after the CK is released they will start coming out. It’s basically the same engine (despite their hype to the contrary) so it shouldn’t take long for some masterpiece balance mods to come out. A few months after they are released they should be really fleshed out by then, and probably built in modular form so you can customize what you want to change. If you're on console, the only way to balance it to your liking is to do it yourself in the game.

Someone will make a mod that alters the way perception works.

It won't really help that much with difficulty though.

Real difficulty comes from having clever AI and Bethesda games sort of lack in this regard. NPCs use only a few spells, they switch weapons out too late, if they have shouts they always use the same one, I've never seen them try scrolls or potions. They don't work well together in groups or try any sort of routing behavior. I'm kind of sad that RPG combat AI hasn't made it past levels that I saw 5-10 years ago.

Skyrim is my first of the Elder Scrolls games and i'm not used of playing RPG games, so i play on adept. Which is default i believe.

Game is effortless on Master. I gave up.

I think people tend to forget that the theme behind the game is that your character develops into a legendary hero...someone the bards will write songs and histories about, and who will go down in legend as a Nord hero.

There comes a point in the game where your character reaches that level, and essentially they can pretty easilly defeat anything they come up against...it's up to you as to when that point is reached.

The problem will always be with open-world RPG's that it is hard to put a brake on a player's ability to develop their character, and to maintain a challenge all the way through a potentially many hundred's of hours game...they aren't linear RPG's where everything is scripted, everything is planned, and the dev's have total control over how a player's game develops or unfolds.

Well difficulty can also be increased in other areas which are joke in Skyrim. The so called "puzzles" for example are not puzzles they take no thinking at all. Of course combat difficulty can be altered with balance of course some people scoff at limitations that would help balancing the games like playing certain classes but limitations are not bad especially when you choose. Hell how bad would it be to pick 3 major skills out of each class type Warrior, Thief, Mage and actually master those 9 skills only. For the rest of the 9 skills can be used at a certain degree hell I would love it if you had to go to a trainer making them actually useful to even use them. Lets say I take 1 handed, Heavy armor, Blocking for the warrior section. I need to talk to trainer first to use Smiting with a very limited amount of progress, or talk to a trainer for archery to use archery with a good accuracy if not just have horrible sway again with a limited amount of room to improve but this allows you to utilize everything at least in game but limit you to some degree and allow you to specialize in certain areas.

Of course right now even using let alone mastering Enchanting or smithing makes the game way too easy in combat. I want to use the mechanics in the game but I can't because if I do I will 1shot or never die even on Master difficulty.