i dont consider not using any of the skills: alchemy, smithing, or enchanting to be "self gimping"

just as i dont consider not using any of the skills: alteration, light armor, or one handed.

in no way, shape, or form does the game ever require you to take any skill in the game, all forms of armor and weapons can be found in random loot (ive found dragonscale and deadric) and so much of the armor in this game comes enchanted anyway (i have actually complained about this) as well as being able to find or purchase countless potions.

I dont want skyrim to be a hard game, and i am not the kind of person that thinks a hard game is fun. i dont want to be forced to use specific skills and perks because if you dont your going to get murdered by any enemy you find. and i find it hard to belive people complain about balance when no TES game has been balanced. plenty of exploits in morrowind, and plenty in oblivion (100% chameleon, 100 magic absorbtion, 100% damage mitigation to name a few)

I also dont think single player games need to be balanced, and people should be able to play how they want, if you want to play through the game on the lowest diff setting with fur armor and a hunting bow you can and it should be fine. and if you want to smith your deadric gear to legendary and double enchant it all so you can play on master you can and should be fine.

I would rather you have to "self gimp" yourself then some less experienced player (80% of the player base i would guess) get frustraited with the game and not play it because its too hard.

cicero-

self-control has nothing to do with the balancing problems that developers create. balancing skyrim by not using the normal functioning features of a game proves ineptitude on their part. saying it the other way: creating balance in a game by being forced to gimp our character is ridiculous.

you aren't being healthy and nutritious by not eating the food or eating all of it. you do what normal people do with good food in the fridge, you eat it as it was intended, one meal at a time.

this 'self-control' rationale is false. it's faulty and not logical. the only way gamesas's decision controls me is the fact that they 'force' me to gimp to create an artificial balance that isn't actually normal within the game. EVERYTHING in your argument points to the problems of their own design.

balanced difficulty for any gamer with some common sense is seen when a rpg with 81 character levels on master difficulty remains difficult THROUGHOUT the game. if you or others can't see that truth then there's no need for a debate. this game not only isn't balanced, it's horribly imbalanced, since, by level 30 you can pretty much never be killed if you're on top of your game.

lol! my 'needs' have nothing to do with difficulty balance. my 'needs' have to do with the preferences i want in the game. we aren't discussing those.

there is NEVER a good reason to not have difficulty balance. i don't need to ever 'understand' gamesas's rationale. it's poor development, period.

I understand your point,but perhaps we speak two different languages,'cause probably you've don't understand mine unfortunately.

I try to be more "clear" and to respond to both (sorry if i made some writing mistake but i have other things to do in the meantime)

-you say that the game is "unbalanced" - i've replied that perhaps its unbalanced for your needs,for someone else can be "perfect" or "mediocre" at best in this regard -opinions,nothing more


- you use terms like "ineptitude","poor development" "ridiculous" against a great game company that probably understand far better than you and me some "aspects" after years of experience

- you use terms like "common sense" and phrases like "you and others can't see that truth" ,"no need for a debate" "normal people" "not logical"


here my point of view :

- what is "common sense" ? who can say this ? you ?

- what is a truth ? your truth ? or the truth that accomplish only your point of view ?

- who can decide here that there are no reasons for a debate ? not certainly you or me.

- who is "normal" for you ? perhaps your view of "normal people" is influenced by your nationality,religion etc.

- what is "Logical" in this world ? you hope to find logic in a simple game like this ? with spoking lizard and cats on two feet or flying dragons ?

it doesn't matter that you don't want the game to be hard: there ARE different difficulty levels and others need a harder game for it to be fun.

you are gimping whether you think so or not IF you are deliberately not choosing a normal gameplay mechanic because you don't want to become overpowered.

what are you talking about that the game doesn't require you to take a skill? to actually PLAY the game you use skills and they level. and, if you're talking about perks then you're also wrong. unless, going up in levels and never picking a perk is what you consider 'normal' gamplay.

people like you, who want an easy game, have everything taking care of your needs: not only are there ridiculously easy settings, but, on master you will get to a point where the game is also ridiculously easy. lucky for you.

those of us who find an easy game boring and a waste of time or, at least, time to create another character have no choice at all, except, gimping.

i will never understand you guys who think the way you do: you can ALWAYS make the game easier. however, one can only do so much to make the game harder.

single player games don't need to be balance? lol. ok, next.
people should be able to play how they want? ah, and so with that statement you prove yourself false or, at least, unable to understand proper rationale: YOU can play how you want. I CAN'T.

too hard? i'm just going to say it right now unabashedly-- if you find the easiest difficulty setting too hard then YOUR POINT IS IRRELEVANT. you are not a good gamer and your wants, wishes, and desires are in the 1%tile and, therefore, disregarded.

wow? your last line proves you really don't get it: to make the game harder on master why in the heck would i use legendary gear and double enchantments??

for those like me, we actually have to NOT use NORMAL gameplay, ie. gimp, in order to create a false difficulty balance.

lol! it's all good, cicero.

i use those terms because game difficulty balance has no excuse. i don't care what gamesas's 'reason' is. EVERY game should have difficulty balance.

especially, when we have multiple difficulty levels to choose from.

i wouldn't use those terms for some of the other aspects of the game that i think were done wrong or i don't agree with. however, there are many other aspects where i would.

@imseeingred
wow. . .i see your opinion, and that you dont like skyrim (and are angry), and i completly dont agree with you, and love skyrim so . . .go me

The balancing issues in Skyrim come in many areas, in my opinion. And they are all, the symptom of poor mechanical and balance design.

Player power and ability vs enemy power and abilities:

Face it, no matter how someone tries to say otherwise, our character the player is 100% designed to be a super special snowflake. 80% or more of the perks and abilities players get, are not shared by NPCs. Enemies in fact, have almost always less than 150 armor rating,very few or 0 perks, and very few spells and/or shouts. And I have never, ever heard of an rpg game that lets the player outlevel the strongest enemies in the game by almost double. That is bad design in my opinion.

The problem shows, when you bring together combinations of perks that create unbalancing effects. It is very obvious the devs did not test many combinations and perk effects, since if they had actually assigned perks to NPCs, they might have run into problems in testing, for example by fighting an npc mage who can stagger lock you. Seems to me like willful negligence, that since they did not have to give NPCs the same perks as players, they did not have to balance player perks to not be unbalanced.

The solution here, is obviously to:

1. Design with a lower, more strict level cap in mind to begin with, and gradually increase it as content designed for the upper levels is made. As it is right now, enemies basically end at level 46, when the player ends at level 81.
2. Purposefully design enemies that are above the cap, at any given time to provide additional challenge. For example, if the cap was 50, they could have enemies in the game that are always between level 51 - 57 or so.
3. Design enemies with perks and spells/special abilities in mind, so that they are not all one trick ponies. Dragons having only one shout, when they natively speak the dang language is a joke.
4. Spread enemy variety around, mix groups and unit tactics to challenge what the player is used to. For example, enemy groups are not very diverse most of the time, but what if we end up facing a group consisting of two mages that exclusively heal their allies from long range, one heavy armor, boss type enemy, two archers, and two rogues?
5. Tone down enemy and player damage, and player armor, make it more about tactics and not who can 1-shot who?

Ai behavior

The Ai in the game can be very stupid, and exploitable. I find it a bit shocking they did not program even some very basic behaviors, such as:

1. Flanking/baiting type behavior
2. Medium wind up, unblockable, extremely high damage attacks to punish turtling behind a shield
3. Some form of leashing behavior, to prevent enemy groups from being cut down one by one, and to counter perching behavior
4. Basic, high damage counter attacks to prevent mindless melee spam
5. Some basic enemy party dynamics, like mage enemies buffing and healing their allies, high health enemies trying to distract and block the player from hurting weaker enemies, etc
6. Some basic hate prioritization beyond attacking whoever has the highest health
7. npc usage of racial powers
8. Counter spells, spell absorbtion/redirection abilities

Pausing and healing

This is a pretty big one, and is just downright silly to me that the player can pause the game at any time, and heal an infinite number of times. Best solution to this in my opinion is:

1. Cut down maximum amount of restorative potions(health/magicka) that can be carried at any given time.
2. Or, put a cooldown before another potion can be used
3. Or, Force potion use to be real time, no pausing
4. Or, make all potions restore health/magicka over time instead of instantly

Uncontested player attributes, stacking enchantment values, and no usage of diminishing returns

This one, is also equally silly. Player attributes that can be increased or manipulated are static values, that are not challenged by enemies. A sensible solution would be:

1. ALL player attributes (armor, resistances, skill level, weapon damage) ought to be contested against enemy skills and values. For example, a level 20 player fighting a level 25 enemy, has all of their attributes degraded against that enemy, because the player is lower in level. For example, said level 20 player vs level 25 enemy, would have all attributes calculated as being 20% less than it actually is,, against that enemy.

2. Diminishing returns added on to all attributes, (armor, resistances, skill level, weapon damage). For example, trying to raise any of those attributes beyond a certain threshold, would require exponentially more and more gains to see any benefit, resulting in a technical soft cap. For example, with fortify one handed damage, the maximum a player could raise it to before diminishing returns kicks in should be around 25% more damage at 100 enchanting, in order to raise it from 25% to 26%, the player has to have an enchanting value of 150. And from 26% to 27%, they would need 200 etc.

3. Enchantment value inherits the highest value. For example, if a player equipped three items, one with 25% one handed, 10% one handed, and 5% one handed, the player should have 25% to one handed as it is the highest value.

Bottom line: Devs should always balance for potential. You don't ignore something Just because not everyone can do it, the fact that anyone even can needs to be accounted for. A good game developer should design content like they are playing chess against the players who utilize their content and enjoy making players earn what they get.

then, you have just experienced the typical problem with things online: misconception, lol.

i don't 'love' any game, but, i do really like skyrim. it's kinda why i'm on this forum debating.

I certainly agree that the game lacks real challenge. I agree with the discussion on fights and how easy they become, very quickly. Everything, ingredients for alchemy, ores for smithing and souls for enchanting are far too easy to come by. Go for a half an hour walk and you can pick up ingredients to make a potion that gives you far too much money. Why does every big town/hold have everything? Surely it would be more of a challenge to have fewer of everything, and certain things only available in specific places? While you're at it get rid of fast travel, make people use the available transport, horses or cart. In a nut shell, don't hand everything on a plate to the players, it does make it all too easy.

Edited to add - my current character is a mage and I haven't bothered going to the college, no need. Says it all.

Of course you are free to use the terms that you want -in a moderate way.

As you can see I've quoted and "emphasized" some other of your "personal terms" that in my opinion are totally "inappropriate" here.

no excuse - For me all is venial in a videogame like this,perhaps you take things too seriously in this regard

i don't care what gamesas's 'reason' is. - And then why gamesas - or other people like me,for that matter -would care of your reasons ?

EVERY game should have difficulty balance. - Who can decide this ? you ? Personally i've already stated what i think about this in other threads -and surprise surprise i even agree partially with you on some aspect in this regard

but what i don't still understand is the way some of you try to "impose" their point of view instead of do a constructive criticism

Nothing is due to you by Bethesda,keep this in mind.

And perhaps if by chance they came here and read terms like yours they will avoid directly to continue in the reading and the aim of your post will remain useless; think about this.

great points. and, for those that don't want a harder, engaging form of combat: lower difficulty options without them or with them, but, toned down.

I always feel like I'm in a parallell world with these threads. As you level up things should get easier but even with my characters with levels in the 40s sudden deah can occur from the higer level monsters. Its kind of neat after hours and days etc of leveling you can smash through many opponants but be halted unexpectedly by the dungeon boss. If there's an unblance its that I often feel the bosses ( esp bandit bosses) are powerful enough to be able to kill ALL their minions at the same time.

Presently I'm playing Tomb Raider Underworld ( easier than Skyrim) Knights of the Old Republic ( again easier) Vampire the masquerade, Bloodlines ( again closer but easier,( I die less) Halo ( easier again) and Batman Arkham Asylum ( about the same harder in some ways easier in others) Unless I'm somehow only Skyrim retarted , I really don't see its so much easier than at least other games I play


Obviously something is lacking for many of you but I'm not seeing the big contrast with other games myself.

fair enough. but, when i say 'i don't care' what i mean, if i explain it is this: i'll listen to their reason, but, i can't think of any that will change my opinion that not having difficulty balance is acceptable.

so, it can be labeled crude, rude, inappropriate, whatever. but, it's not overly so and i'm mostly using it to get my point clearly across this difficult medium we call the internet, lol.

I've don't find yet a person who is able to change his opinion in this forum if that helps

Apart from joke, no one wants to change your opinion,i've understand and respect it of course ; it's the way it is expressed that don't convince me

No needs to be "rude" to express your reasons,even on the internet; thats what i think. You only risk to be misunderstood at the end.

i hear ya.

but, i'm also pretty sure you understand that i find the difficulty balance issues to be very serious and very lacking in skyrim.

Hopefully the developers will partially fix -or improve - this aspect in the upscoming contents/Dlcs,who knows ?

DLC's are for content, not bug fixes. Those are patches. Silly gewse

Interesting discussion!

Some of you seem to think that the problem is in the numbers, but I disagree. I think this is a systematic error that can not be solved by trying to balance the current system. This is a problem that every game with any form of crafting have to solve.

Look at smithing for example.

There are two possibilities
a) smithing produces armors that are stronger than the strongest armor you can find
smithing can not produce the strongest armor in the game (i.e. there are artifacts that are stronger than any armor produced by smithing).

(this is true to some extent for the other crafting skills as well)

Option a) makes it possible to produce a the strongest armor possible at any point in the game unless there are some restrictions to progress (for example, a certain material is not available below a certain level and I mean character level, not the skill level of smithing).

Option makes smithing useless as long as you have to invest perks (why put perks in a skill that does not give you any distinct advantages?).

A quick and dirty solution would be to have materials scale with character level instead of skill level, but that would produce a lot of complaints from the community no doubt. Probably more so than the current situation.

I really think that this is a problem inherited by level scaling. Unique loot and extremely strong enemies would make this a non-issue. Too strong? Seek out stronger opponents!

What are we discussing is a gameplay choice,not a bug
And however who can tell you ? never say never my friend...you can always have a Dlc and a patch at the same time

The game is balanced for those who don't gimp themselves, just not for everyone who doesn't gimp himself. Numerous players find a good challenge on Adept without gimping. Some players make themselves overpowered on Adept, and enjoy the journey to becoming overpowered, and they enjoy the end of that journey. Never think of it as gimping, even if gimping is your motivation; think of it as creative character design.

You can choose to avoid becoming overpowered. Players who want to become overpowered can choose to become overpowered. Change the game to your liking, and nobody can choose to become overpowered. To some players -- and we heard them aplenty in Oblivion's forums as they condemned level scaling -- proper balance means giving characters the power to eventually dominate. That kind of balance, weak on one end and dominating on the other, but not dominating too soon, feels right to them. Certain skills and items that you consider to be overpowered are not overpowered in another player's hands or in combination with different skills or with different distributions of attributes. Change the game to your liking, and you risk breaking a balance of which you are unaware, one that provides a fun, fair challenge for others. So, some players aren't overpowered with things you yourself find overpowered, and some players just enjoy achieving overpowered characters.

seriously?

one last time and i'll be simple and blunt:

there is no option for those who want a difficult game throughout, except, gimping. gimping is not an acceptable substitute for balanced difficulty.

Seriously. Your concept of balance is not the same as other players' concepts of balance. Give you your balance and you risk screwing up theirs.

Suppose you reach maximum power and find the game pleasingly difficult. Do you quit because you can't grow any bigger and stronger, or do you keep on playing and having fun? If you keep on playing and having fun, then your fun doesn't depend on getting bigger and stronger. If your fun doesn't depend on getting bigger and stronger, then why is it so unacceptably bad to choose to avoid becoming bigger and stronger when you have the choice?

Technically, playing on any difficulty setting above Novice is gimping. Therefore, Novice should be made to be difficult throughout.

Um... it should since it y'know... allows you too.

How does no one get the basic concepts of design?

Did you mean Adept? The default setting is Adept, so I would have to disagree that playing on a setting above Novice is gimping. But I would agree that playing on a setting above Adept is gimping and should be difficult throughout.

Gimping isn't even effective.

After seeing this thread, I recently started a new character on master difficulty to see if it was true. I never played for long on it before.

Well, I've been using a huge variety of skills (restoration, destruction, one-handed, two-handed, heavy armor, conjuration) as a nord and haven't "focused" on anything, I've played for about 4 hours and I'm level 7 and have only died once and it was from falling.

Unless by gimping you mean using iron armor for the entire game, or going naked, which is pretty stupid.

One thing that might help a bit is to get rid of the health/magicka/stamina bonuses that the player gets. The player gets a starting +50 to each of those, while NPCs do not.