What exactly do people expect? In RL, the equivalent of level 55 would be Achilles. I'd EXPECT it to be easy. Are a few people suggesting fiddling with the game just to gimp the handful of people who don't know when to start a new character?

Which was due to leveled scaling. You know, the thing everyone and their brother complained about. Take it out and it's only a challenge until you reach a high level. Leave it in and folks hate it because you never get super powerful.

And keep in mind that at some point, unless the game has an ending, it will get easy for everyone. They have to stop scaling/challenge at some point and no matter where it's capped...someone will reach that level and find it easy.

Except there are several people, without even naming gods, that could probably give Achilles a run for his money or out right beat him.

Why do I have to start a new character?

Im not saying I don't want to get more powerful; new enemies which are introduced at higher levels should be harder and the previous enemies which you struggled with should be come very easy to kill.

But with Skyrim all the enemies are easy to kill even the late game Elder Dragons. You should reach a point where you are very powerful but there should ALWAYS be a challenge.

That's why you mix scaling and having set levels for certain types of enemies.

Which is what they did.

But not matter what, in an RPG you will eventually be as strong or stronger than anything in the game. So what is the highest lever your character should reach and what is the highest level your enemies should reach? Should it be infinate? All of it could be avoided if the game were to have an ending.

Achilles is the ultimate "arrow in the knee" example...

I think a lot of the problem is that many of us are hanging out for new content and new challenges...meaning DLC.

I have no doubts that the game's DLC will liven things up a bit, and add a lot of new content both character wise and challenge wise.

At the moment, in my case, I'm level 67, skilled up in everything I pretty much want, and will take too long to boost up levels to get mor perks, and there's no longer any further sense of achievement...hey, I didn't even get a reward for finishing one of the main quests, and got no npc recognition for it...("we give you our thanks"...fair go, I don't want thanks pal, I want booty!).

A bear can only swing so hard, a dragons fire can only burn so hot, but you my friend are a god.

I don't rush through games. After level 25, the game became trivial for almost any build on any difficulty setting. I play on Master. I don't expect the developer to properly balance a game like this for every build and every playstyle, that is asking a lot. They could however have done a better job balancing it, a lot better AI, and given the PLAYERS the ability to have more control over the difficulty. The fact that the difficulty slider in the PAST did not work well has nothing to do with that option just how it was implemented. I think if you gave the players the ability to control how enemies scale (setting level offsets, when enemies stop scaling etc) without having to mod the game or use the CK, this problem would be minimized.

Pretty much this. RPers are going to be busy for quite a while. Power gamers are going to end up feeling like Umbra in Morrowind.

I swear TES games are best on a PC, because if you get bored fighting something then you can make a more powerful version yourself.

Well if Gandalf would be somewhere around 90 levels, then Balrog from Moria could be around 80-90, depending how strong Maiar he would be. I haven't noticed anywhere any kind of mentioning of his previous position in Morgoth's army and how powerful he was among other Balrog. But Balrog commonly were minor Maiar, as Gandalf was too. Morgoth and rest of Vala would have put Gandalf down almost by merely thinking about it. Sauron was very strong for Maiar, clearly above Gandalf i believe. So i spot slight flaw in there.

I tend to loose interest in around level 40, not because ease of playing but typically my characters have reached their goals and desires which are their goals, so to keep on playing them starts to feel more power playing which i don't enjoy at all.

But Skyrim is awfully easy at higher levels, yeah. Not that i would mind, level 50 and above should be pretty much on his own level. Only Dragons should be much more powerful than what they are.

You max out your character and level up to unbelievable acts in an RPG, and you actually are unbelievably strong?

That's completely unheard of

OK, why? You want a challenge, others don't. For a start, if the game is always a challenge, why level at all? What's the point of getting better if the enemies just get harder? As i said earlier, the whole idea is that once you reach a certain level you are effectively the most powerful person this world, and the game rightly reflects that. But out of interest, have you tried fighting the Greybeards? Most of them are level 100.

In every other RPG I have ever played not even a quarter of the way through the content I am also not so unbelievably strong everything flops over and dies in a hit. This isn't a question of once you get to say level 81 with everything maxed, but something like level 25 EVERYTHING is trivial. These are unmaxed characters that are so overpowered you stand absolutely no chance whatsoever of dying and everything dies in one or two hits. In other RPGs, I do not wear my starting gear and not level up intentionally to compensate for a poorly balanced game. Stop making excuses for a busted system.

If you can reach level 81 in Skyrim, some enemies should be between levels 82-85. There should always be some enemies, throughout the entire game, that out level you by 1-5 levels for a challenge.


You weren't even godly with Knights of the Round or Omnislash in Final Fantasy VII.

I think you and others are under the false pretense that "wanting a continual challenge" means that the game is AS difficult early on as it is when you get nearly the best gear and level up. The way it SHOULD work is that you "outgrow" certain enemies and grow into new ones. This should be a continual cycle that almost never ends. This is a TRUE SCALING system. In Skyrim, what this means is that you might have Bandit (1-10), Bandit Marauder (11-20), Bandit Enforcer (21-30), Bandit Highwayman (31-40) and so forth all the way up to the LEVEL CAP 81. This means that if you were level 30, Bandits are fairly trivial, Bandit Marauders are easy, Bandit Enforcers are an even match, and Bandit Enforcers are challenging.

This gives things a nice mix, now the issue becomes HOW to implement this. That is pretty easy, you would place the static enemies throughout the world in dungeons, ruins, and in the open world (tiers of zones). Any random encounter OR dungeon/ruin that is a part of a QUEST becomes scaled. Upon zoning in (similar to now) you would encounter a blend of tier of enemies. BASED ON THE DIFFICULTY SETTING would dictate what that blend was. For example, an adventurer that is level 30 who zones into a dungeon they have a quest for on Adept might encounter an even balance of Bandit Marauders, Bandit Enforcers, and Bandit Highwaymen - but NEVER a Bandit (1-10). A Novice player WOULD encounter Bandits, Bandit Marauders, and Bandit Enforcers but NEVER a Bandit Highwayman. A Master player might ONLY encounter Bandit Highwaymen. What this means is you are setting the LEVEL OFFSET of how enemies scale dynamically and STILL keeping static spawns in the world. This gives you the feel of progression still and lets you the PLAYER dictate the type of challenge you will encounter. TA-freaking-DA

You could also combine with that enemy types that will always scale with your level, say always being 1-5 levels higher than you. You then, depending on quest and/or game difficulty, randomly generate them in world locations, including dungeons. This allows for greater challenge and removes some of the feeling of repetitiveness by being able to guess what enemy types you will encounter.

Exactly. While I don't exactly like the traditional RPG method of basically killing Rats and Bats then Skeletons and then Humanoids and finally Demons/Dragons, I think that progressively having more options adds a nice touch of variety to the game to break up the monotony. Like you said, there are numerous ways of going about doing this. I don't think we (the gamers) should only have enemies work this way but itemization as well. It makes me really sad capping out my items so early on, and not even by crafting with absolutely nothing to look forward to loot wise. I expected better from Skyrim. The world and environment is great, they just need to beef up how their game works inside of that environment and the game would be untouchable.

What I believe could even be done is mix in some of the scaling mobs with the capped mobs to even further break up the repetitive monotony of knowing exactly what kind of enemy you'll be facing.

Bandit Thugs usually cap out at level 20 and you're level 23? Not Pete the Bandit Thug. Nope, you strolled into his personal cave, deemed Thug Pete Plaza, and you're going toe to toe with a level 28 Bandit Thug.

I think the radiant quest system could be very useful for this.Have one of the quest givers for each guild offer fully scaled quests.It will have no impact on anything except the interior of the location you are sent to.

They would be entirely optional so if you have no interest in them you do not have to them but if you would like to find a worthy foe at higher levels thiscould work

The complication being, of course, that there's so many different ways to level & play in a TES game (compared to a much-more-controlled mostly linear game) that it's very hard to "balance". The more options there are, the harder it is to account for every possibility.



Hmm. Personally, I found Shivering Isles to be pretty ClangClangClangClangClangClangClang tedious

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81's only the "level cap" because that's what maxing all 18 skills gets you to. They didn't balance the game around that because expecting people to max out 10+ skills isn't part of their game design.

That's bad design.

Everyone wants a challenge, thats the reason we play games.

But your missing the main point... you level up to face bigger and more powerful enemies and discover new ways of killing those enemies (spells, weapons and shouts). Now EVENTUALLY you will become the most powerful in the world and thats fine. But this should happen at 100% game completion! On Skyrim you become ultra powerful too early and thats what this thread is about.

Also the Greybeards aren't enemies in the game so thats irrelevant.

@AcesTranquility - I'm on board for more challenge in the game. But there are a lot of people who play TES that aren't. Also, there's no such thing as 100% completion in a TES game, and we like it that way.

What I'd like to see is the percent of difficult encounters to decrease slowly as you level. Skyrim kind of does this, but mostly within the first 15 - 20 levels, and then the difficulty drops off fast. If the curve was pushed to the right by about 20 levels, that would be perfect for me, but I'm not sure if others in the "challenge camp" would be satisfied.

@RPGBenefactor - I really like the idea of some placed (or even random but infrequent) special opponents that are extra-tough. In a way that's what I talk about above, where I want the average difficulty to decrease, but still tough fights to keep it fun.