Install PISE it tries to do all the things you listed to make the game harder. It removes someof the enemy scaling, makes the loot a lot less cheesy and autoleveld. Improves combat AI of enemies and increase spawns.

The OP might be talking ONLY about the incredibly big health bar, but believe me, the AI changes too. I have to wait until a good striking opportunity, because if I try to hit the enemy at random, I mostly get blocked, staggered, and hit back. It's even worse if you do power attacks: they'll bash you, stopping your attack, but you STILL lose that stamina.

They do this slightly on easier difficulties, but on Master you REALLY need to watch out for it

How about no, and frankly I couldnt care less what you think. This is a forum, and I am entitled to post what I like when I like as long as it is within the forums rules.

Oh and U man bro?

Totally agree with the OP, they should have increased stealth detection, lengthen enemy alertness (after being hit/detection), enemy ai, enemy count and so on... instead of just raising enemy HP and DMG. That's exactly the reason why Master Difficulty is too EASY!

unless you play against human there will always be different ideas about AI

i played lots of games and wasnt able to beat the AI on hardest difficulty . the elder scroll is not one of them

i remember a game . world of Warcraft i h= guess there was 3 trains passing and attackers were coming from all directions imo it was impossible
to save those trains i posted on the game forums and the elite players said its so easy and they wish if it was harder .

Thats pretty much how all games are on harder difficulty.Take Fight Night Champion for example.the only difference between the "pro" difficulty(2nd highest) and "G.O.A.T." (greatest of all time\Hradest setting) is that your opponents have more health & stamina and hit harder.Other then that there is no change to at all.

The difficulty slider is actually an improvement over Oblivion. What it actually does in Skyrim is amplify NPC damage output, and reduce PC damage output. This means all NPCs get the bonuses, so companions and summons aren't gimped, while your character is.

I have mixed feelings about the approach of gimping PC damage. On one hand, Master is pretty easy, except for the occasional boss. On the other, it gets annoying when your run into the NPCs who can soak a ridiculous amount of damage.

The best way to fix difficulty (better AI and greater numbers of foes) isn't an option for consoles (too resource-intensive), and this type of issue isn't BGS strong point, anyway.

Pretty much. Mass Effect 2 went a little bit away from this and IMO even that small of a change made a big difference. To sum up enemies became more accurate up to 100% accurate on insanity(basically a damage increase) enemies also gained shields and or armor, which is basically extra health but shields/armor blocked the crowd control effects and there were powers to defeat armor/shields. It added a bit of a tactical swing to the high difficulties, it wasn't much(use rock/paper/scissors tactics) but it really effected the feel of the game without enemies becoming hit point sponges, you could still one shot people or take them out in a split second with some basic tactics but that tiny extra step of needed tactics made a big difference. And supposedly in ME 3 the enemy will have a more aggressive AI(better flanking etc.) on the higher difficulties.

Basically the AI/NPCs don't have to be drastically different on higher difficulties to have a big effect on how the game feels, so to me it is almost inexcusable that game companies still fall back on this hit point sink, increased damage tactic.

Master easy mode (each of these skills make Master easier):
Stealth
Archery
Enchantment
Heavy armor
Smithing
Block
Conjuration

Master hard mode (each of these skills make Master difficulty harder):
Destruction
Restoration
Speech
Lockpicking
Pickpocketing

Sneak archers telling us master isn't hard, or people using conjuration...

Make a destruction mage without enchantment and then tell me how fun that is, if you refrain from metagaming.

Been there done that, I got 4 characters;
My initial jack of all trades adept, then once I had a handle on the character progression and gameplay 3 further master characters of Warror/Mage/Thief.

Warriors are bloody easy mode, you just hit stuff on the head till it stops moving. Armor allows you to soak up oodles of damage and its easy to level and gear is plentiful. Destruction on master is crap and doesnt do enough dps to stop you constantly necking potions, but you can work through it if you play tactical and use other schools to supplement it. But it absolutely requires cast reduction gear in some capacity as you will never have a mana pool big enough to fight extended engagements or recast high end spells. My current thief is a melee dual wielder, so no sneaking, no ranged and no block. Since I have proper armor (unlike a pure mage) I to can soak up massive damage and dish out plenty when dual power attacking. And again gear is plentiful.

I still think master is easy, and would pay for a DLC pack with increased monster count, scaling, and an even higher AI difficulty. I think its easy because I only have to think and play smart. I dont stand in the middle of a pack of enemies swinging like a loony. I hit, manouver, hit, manouver, strike hard, manouver...... see the pattern?

In a word ; Kiting tactics. Any player worth his salts knows how to kite.

Actually, no. If Beth was able to create this level of AI, we'd want that as the default behavior. Numbers aren't really the way either. Your argumentation against numbers are completely valid. Also, it could mean that master would only be available nicely on higher end hardware - not good. I've played several games where the end battle was so AI filled (or for other reason THAT much more intense to perform) that it couldn't be handled by my modest hw.

I think what we have is good enough, if anything they should be even harder, because all my characters so far has been tossed in the bin for making the game too easy at master.

I don't share OPs concerns at all. Sure it gets frustratingly difficult at times. It's on the highest difficulty, its supposed to be difficult. He claims that the end boss in the barrow is tough, but he fails to mention two tactical possibilities he doesn't take; withdraw and come back later when you understand this opponent is too touch for you, or use the tactical possibilities within the area itself to your (slightly exploitative, I have to say) advantage - I'm sure these things are put there for a reason.

And stop complaining it's too hard just because your typical build can't make it - at least you have the option to lower the difficulty. All we are left with are abandoned characters, trying to nerf better next time. This time around I'm not doing armor at all, no crafting, no weapons. Sure, I get one shotted pretty much all the time when things get close. But hear this: I'M STILL ENJOYING THAT KIND OF FRUSTRATION!

You can amp up the AI quite a bit while still having all the basics on default difficulty though. NPCs just react faster/better/more often in games that do this that I've played, and it seems to work - a sort of general lowering of your windows of opportunities. Archers, mages would aim and kite better, NPCs would use potions and scrolls more often, warriors would bash and block more effectively, etc. etc.

I think they could handle a fair amount of these things without it being an issue for hardware. Besides, TES VI will likely/hopefully be created for more powerful consoles/PCs.

The topic title made me laugh, I used to always say that when I was young, the computer cheats, whilst biting the pad, punching tv screen and trashing bedroom. The joys of teenage inbalance.

Oh a computer that cheats never would of thought of it!

That all any rpg has ever done with difficulty as far as I know.. raise Hp's and resistances of enemies. I think in the old black isle games enemies also had access to greater spells. In reality I've always thought that to raise difficulty would be to actually give everyone (including player) less hitpoints. One or two hits your dead sort of thing. Make it more realistic by making people more vulnurable instead. You'd have an easier time killing others but also have to worry about yourself a lot more.

Enchanting is the crafting skill of mages,so why a player that plays as a magican shouldnt use this to his advantage??? Master difficulty was very easy as mage because even deathlords and ancient dragons could be stunlocked without any restrictions. And with potions that increased destruction damage those enemies even died fast when using their weaknesses.

I agree the master difficulty in Skyrim is unimaginative and lame.

The worst of all as I'm sure have been mentioned (sorry didn't read everything) is a destruction mage who just can't damage anything effectively. Unless you're willing to enchant -100% mana cost equip and stagger an enemy for a full minute to death.


That being said, the hardest difficulty still the most fun for me but only for one particular class: Stealth assassins using illusion.
Backstab multipliers make sure your attacks still hurt and with illusion you can make one OP enemy fight another one, thus scaling better than most gameplay styles.

Most classes that don't want to abuse smithing or min-maxing should stay away from master but as a stealth/illusion user I strongly recommend it.

Personally I had no problem with the amount of damage that I took on master difficulty level, it made the game more interesting for me. What I couldn't stand was the feeble amount of damage my character did, it just made the combat tedious.

My ideal would be for both the player character and general enemies to die in around 1-5 hits, bosses a few more. Hopefully this is something I can easily mod if I feel inspired to play the game again.

The Civ games cheat. Wouldn't bother me if they just came out and said yeah the higher difficulties cheat but when they deny it, I get a little irritated. Yeah I lost 3 modern armors to 5 spearmen due to random chance, and the game cheating had nothing to do with it. I mean if that was a fluke that would be one thing, but crap like that happens all the time on the harder difficulties. Admittedly I have not played 5 much so maybe it is different now.

Skyrim does not cheat it pretty much flat out lets you know higher difficulties mean enemies do more damage and can take more damage.

Anyways I look forward to the time when the AI is what provides the challenge and not damage/health boosts.

Dawn of War's AI litteraly cheats on higher difficulties. The AI in that game uses resource cheats to ahead of the players development at the highest difficulties, and it even spawns in units for free. You can clearly see it when you have it backed in to a corner, its still spewing out units with no economy to back it up.

I forgot that. Man its been a while since I played my skills are so rusty I'd hamstring anyone I teamed up with in multiplayer. I still prefer the more RTS dawn of war to the RTT Dawn of war 2.

They typically do the highest difficulty one of two ways: more enemies (if you've got the processing power), or your hits do almost nothing while the enemy can one hit kill you.

While I don't play Master, I do agree with you. Simply bumping up an AIs attack and hit points is an incredibly lazy way to do it and it should be changed.

Along with harder pick locks, higher prices, etc.

The balance isn't great.

On Master if you want to melee face to face you need a sword and shield, and even that's not incredibly viable until you get the block-running and elemental resist perks.

As a mage conjuration makes master pretty easy, since summoned creatures don't take extra damage on Master but do get the enhanced NPC hitpoints. That means summons/thralls are pretty damn overpowered on Master. Then there's dremora lords which can solo the whole game for you.

A thief with stealth is overpowered for obvious reasons; stealth is ridiculously strong.

There's crafting exploits to make severely overpowered weapons and armor.

If you don't use any of those tactics you'll spend the whole time getting chased around and 1-shotted every time an NPC gets within an inch of you.

Game's still fun, but you're not going to enjoy anything if you focus on balance. Use the overpowered elements of crafting to make whatever build you want viable, if your build isn't one of the already overpowered ones, and just enjoy the world and story.