Hi.

So i had this idea, and did not see it anywhere else around here. With expansions upcoming and all i thought they include this!

Heres the deal. What if we got two sliders for how much damage is being dealt, independent of each other? One for us, and one for everyone else, ranging between x1 and x10. This would eliminate all problems with balance! Destruction weak? tweak your slider! Archers OP? Tweak their slider! Want a more lethal combat? Tweak both sliders!

To those that have experience with modding, how hard is this to do?

Cheers!

That is an interesting suggestion with the two sliders. I have not heard that precise suggestion before, but there has been lots of discussion here in the forum about the need for options and sliders. Things like a slider that would affect monster spawn level and a sneak difficulty slider. There is sure a lot of room for improvement in this area.

Sub-sliders? That would make a hell of a difference for the gameplay! Must be hard to do, or they would have done it, right?

I don't know anyone who would go "Oh I deal too much damage, I will choose to deal less damage". It is far more appealing if you deal the same damage but enemies become stronger or more resilient. Essentially it does the same thing, but it is way easier to stomach enemies getting progressively stronger than to hamstring your character. Further, damage is a very small component of what makes Skyrim trivial. Due to the fact combat is so one-dimensional and how bad the AI is, this is what makes it so easy. You aren't fixing that with a slider.

You mean like level-scaling? By the endgame of Oblivion ogres, wraiths and liches would have thousands of HP, and my sword still dealt 30 damage. Not a good solution.

I dont know about you, but i sure would adjust the sliders until i got a balanced gameplay. One could add dual sliders for health too.

Level scaling is a good thing if, like every other RPG, you get more powerful as you level. The trick to level-scaling is to have it to where the game is created in a giant cycle. You outgrow certain enemies and grow into new ones as you level. This could be new types and/or tiers of enemies. For example, enemies scale (dismally so) but they do scale in Skyrim. As you level, so do many other enemies. The problem is that level is a horrendous indicator of power in Skyrim. The player scales astronomically out of line with enemies making it not just easy but trivial, especially with any sort of competent build or player. Sliders are great but that won't fix why Skyrim is so damn easy.

Not necessarily. There are lots of simple and easy things they could do but don't, like make toggles to turn off sneak corsshair, compass, auto health regen, etc. I think it is more something the Bethesda just cannot be bothered with because it would distract them from designing more cool looking kill cams.

I think the real reason they don't worry about this stuff is that they are focused on the bottom line aiming at the casual gamer who would never notice more options in the "Options" menu. Bethesda expects that their games will be fixed by the modding community for the serious roleplayer.

I think that is shortsighted since a lot of "console" players are really serious about their roleplaying but for whatever reason prefer to play on a console.

If you want it done, do it yourself.
Otherwise it won't happen.
THAT is the honest truth.

Dude, if your sword only dealt 30 damage in Oblivion, you need to go enchant it. Because of the way weaknesses stack exponentially in Oblivion, you can easily make an enchanted dagger that will take down anything in the game at maximum level and difficulty in five or six hits. The problem with level scaling in Oblivion and Skyrim is typically that the game gets too easy at higher levels, not too hard.

This was an major issue in Oblivion, main issue with the sliders that was they went to far 1/7 to 7x I think and no way to remember the setting if you had to adjust it against an boss.

The other issue with Oblivion was that enemies did to little damage, however as high level enemies had loads of health and you did not do much damage either, say 50 hp damage against 400-1000 hp enemies you did not want to do less damage.
This does not aply in Skyrim where you can easy do +500 hp damage at higher levels.
So I say this is not as needed in Skyrim unless you play an pure mage and then you do something wrong anyway.

I used umbra, the best sword in the game damage -wise. I wasnt into exploiting back then either.


And people say that the pc-folks gets shafted in this deal Im a console player, and i rolepay, just as you said. I cant afford a gaming-pc. Do Bethesda consider all console owners idiots?

Actually, they could include a whole bunch of toggles in the next DLC/expansion. One can dream right?