I can play Skyrim with a level 49 character that has the maxed damage threshold and 50% magic resistance, and most enemies are absolute cake. But every so often, out of nowhere, I find myself fighting a Draugr Deathlord or an Arch-Mage or an Ancient Dragon and with one hit, they will absolutely THRASH my HP, despite the 85%/50% damage reduction and the fact that most of my stats went to Health. With the dragons and the arch mages in particular, there's not so much I can do as the dragon will just fly by breathing fire and if there's no place to take cover, I have no choice but to try and heal up. With the Arch-mages, their damage output is often even worse since they just send a constant flurry of hits that take well over half of my HP.
Before long, I simply find myself spamming HP pots until I find an opening of some sort, OR the Sanguine Rose is an absolute neccesity for my combat characters, just to draw focus away from myself.

I do play on Master difficulty, so of course it is worse, but even so, I'm referring to the DRASTIC difference in enemy strength. On one hand my armor and magic resistance makes me almost unkillable by most enemies, but on the other hand, I feel like with the stronger enemies, my stats don't matter at all OR I would immediately die if I somehow accidently unequipped a single armor piece. While a challenge is nice, the gap is waaaaay too big, and unless your character utilizes absolutely EVERY skill, (block especially seems to make a HUGE difference in character power, with sword and board characters feeling worlds stronger than others) fights quickly turn into HP potion spam.



What do you think of Skyrim's difficulty curve? Is it better than past titles? (Morrowind, Oblivion, FO3, FO:NV) Worse? I can't help but feel like this is a repeat of Point Lookout, where in order to provide challenge, they've provided us with boss enemies (which, there's always at least one per dungeon, often more) that pierce directly through all of our stat points, negating our hard work in building our characters.

Yes I do. I play Adept but when I go to Expert I get this drastic change. Master just makes it slightly harder than Expert. A wolf could be killed with one hit on novice and apprentice. Lets say I turn to Adept 2 hits. Expert = 4. Master= 8

I haven't gone higher than adept yet, but seeing how I plow through everything in front of me I may try a change of pace.

Most enemies are easy at higher levels, but some are absurdly overpowered, like briar hearts, bandit chiefs, arch-mages, and ancient dragons.

Just to clarify...

I'm not talking about the difficulty gap between adept and master, I'm talking about how you can enter one dungeon and clear the entire area without using a single HP potion, then you get to the boss and you have to uses 3 or 4 on him alone.
Or how that feels perfectly fine, but then as you wander through the wilderness you run across a dungeon with an archmage, and the archmage absolutely bombs your HP potion supply.

It's kind of frustrating because there's no sense of normality; there's constant spikes in power.
Secondly, sometimes enemies feel almost impossible for certain builds. For example if I'm using two-handed on a warrior type character and I run into an archmage....what the HELL am I supposed to do? With that build type I simply lack the tools to take him down without having to waste a ton of resources. Block seems to have every tool under the sun, but some other build types seem incredibly lacking, to the point where potion spam is sometimes the only solution.

Nope, you're not the only one Longknife. I actually think some of these enemies have Scaled attack, particularly the highest level of Forsworn Briarheart. I personally don't look at is a bad thing in itself, but the inconsistency is kind of irritating. I'd rather have it be hard more often, instead of having one enemy out of nowhere be the Dovahkiin's worst nightmare.

Your problem with the Arch-warlock is actually addressed in a Skill book (I forgot the name). Basically, the lesson is, close the gap fast and hit 'em hard.

I like that weakness in the Barbarian build though, so I'm not going to suggest changing it, use cover or lure them to you.

Anything less than master is too easy imo and I personally don't mind coming across an enemy every now and then that nearly knocks my head into oblivion. It keeps me on edge and makes the game more exciting than if I knew I could kill everything at any given time in any dungeon.

I play as a stealth character so I only use light armor which will have an effect and I take about equal health, magica and stamina points so not having maxed out health will have a big effect as to why I can nearly and in some cases have been one hit ko'd

Problem is most of the time you are the spike in power when going through most enemies, it's good I think that sometimes the tables are reversed

If anything I think the most frustrating part about it is....

Oblivion, Morrowind and New Vegas, in my opinion, handled the difficulty better. In what way? All three provided all types of characters with tools to handle different situations. Oblivion gave you enough resources to maximize your damage resistances and enemy damage remained reasonable. Morrowind had an enchanted item or magic spell type for every situation imaginable. Likewise, New Vegas had a drug, perk or weapon type for every situation imaginable; some enemies were DESIGNED to kill your character in one shot, but certain drugs let you reduce the damage anyways or double your movement speed to avoid the hits. Morrowind had sanctuary, New Vegas had turbo. Morrowind had 100% magic resistance, New Vegas had Med-x + Slasher + Battle Brew.

Skyrim on the other hand, my pure mage CANNOT get hit vs one of these stronger enemies. My two-handed warrior will lose EVERY HP potion he has killing a Briarheart or an archmage. My stealth characters CANNOT be caught or their screwed, which sometimes leads to incredibly long sessions of shooting once, hiding, then waiting to shoot again.

It just feels like some build types (not outrageous ones either) are extremely lacking when it comes to being provided with skills and tools to handle such enemies. Block seems as though it horded EVERY perk in the game to counter all of the end-game enemies, making it feel like a neccesity.

Sprint in and power attack. If they don't get stunned bash and power attack again. You have to take advantage of the higher dps and stun. But that's if you aren't incinerated on the trip from point A to B...

Exactly. Hence the stress on Ancient Dragons and Archmages. I'm more than aware of power attacks being the bread-and-butter defensive move, but a dragon is already gonna get his attack off before you can, and some arch mages will kite you for DAYS while spamming frost spells.

I totally agree on Mages as a 2handed user, but everything else not so much. Blocking is overly important, but really, how is that different from Oblivion? If anything, blocking is less important in Skyrim because bashfest isn't as necessary.

I don't know if I"d say New Vegas had difficulty at all. Just make a couple poisons at a campfire, and win the game. Oblivion didn't even have a difficulty curve whatsoever. The entire game felt like you were fighting a reskinned and remeshed hp Sink. Morrowind was even more sketchy than Skyrim, particularly with NPCs. You had no idea if you were walking into a level 1 bandit cave, or a level 20 where they'll faceroll you instantly, and there generally weren't enough visual cues to give that away.

Like I said, the only thing I can agree with you on is Warlocks for 2handed characters, everything else is just silly.

In summation, every Bethesda game, and New Vegas has difficulty curve issues. It comes down to your preference, I prefer Skyrim's errors over the rest.

Why is low level harder then end game? The higher you get the less you get trashed. Bad game design.

Skyrim's difficulty is mostly stat based (more enemy health, punsh) although it is mainly an action game. Does not go along well.

What the hell did I just read?

(For the record, RPGs have always done their Difficulty curve Backwards, or in a crest, Skyrim is a bell-crest, so it doesn't even apply here)

It's a problem inherent with Level-scaling.
It throws the game out of whack.

I much prefer the Static leveling.

Right, my question being if we've improved on it or not.

The most famous difficulty curve was Oblivion's, which had leveled everything. (actually, to be fair only a handful of enemies in Oblivion continued to level with you, but the SPAWNS leveled, and they'd spawn those handful of leveled enemies 90% of the time). The result was that you'd end up having needlessly long battles against enemies that could never hope to kill you. You knew you'd win because their damage was NOT leveled, just their HP. You felt like your leveling was pointless, because while you weren't going to die, the fights took as long as ever, which was boring.

My praise of Morrowind and New Vegas was....for example you say with Morrowind, you'd see an enemy and you wouldn't know if he's a pushover or a god. Right. However, if you found out he was a god and died, you could reload, look at your inventory, and strategize how to kill him. Morrowind provided you with ample tools to kill your opponents and ample ways to approach situations, as did New Vegas. The downside to these two is that while it DOES spare you from the long pointless fights of Oblivion, some people get bored with most fights being pushovers, ALTHOUGH when you do find a tough fight, the difficulty felt right, imo. (the difficulty provided by these being you'd get into fights where you knew what to do and you knew what could finish you, and your survival depended on you NOT screwing up. For example, Divide Deathclaws in New Vegas will one-shot you, so you better get that headshot with your sniper or you're toast. The chance of success and death was equal for both you and your opponent)

With Skyrim though? Take the same scenario as Morrowind. You run into a guy on the road, you gotta fight him, you dunno if he's a god or not. He is, he kills you, you reload.

...Now what?

I think Skyrim's main weakness in difficulty curve is that it fails to provide the player with enough tools for each scenario. Two-handed vs. Mage is suicide. Mage vs. Archers is left to pray they shoot your atronach.
Some trees are very well balanced. Block has an answer to every scenario, as does archery. Several other trees however, like Two-handed and mages in general, lead you into a pot spamming frenzy, which needless to say, isn't a fun way to play the game.

All the difficulties of all Bethesda titles have upsides and downsides, but I'm asking which one people prefer. Because as things are now, I personally just get frustrated with Skyrim. If I die, I wanna die knowing I died because I failed to utilize a resource I should've or didn't play well enough. In Oblivion if I died, it's because I fought poorly. In Morrowind or New Vegas if I died, it's because I failed to utilize a tool I could've/should've/would've. In Skyrim? I die because there's just no freaking way for my two-handed character to take out that frost mage without wasting ALL of my health pots, and I don't quite enjoy dying because the shopkeeper only had 8 HP potions in stock instead of 12 that week.

If the 2h vs mage is a specific problem of yours, what about shouts to rupt?

That aside I agree.

The best tactic to kill any magic user in any game. Kill them before they can even cast any spells. I think I learned that in one of the Dragon Age games, but I can't remember.

definitely agree, the briarhearts are a pain in the ass.

It's no different than any of the other games you mentioned... the tools and skills are there to overcome any adversity... it's just up to you to use them...

I think all difficulties are quite easy and haven't experienced almost one hit kills yet even on master but that said i do hate when enemy scaling flips out and have a 6 lvl higher dungeon boss.

I don't recall ever having a problem like you describe. When I faced something that felt stronger than the rest I would use Marked for Death and then steamroll. Mages get some real sweet tricks, especially if you go deep conjuring and can bust a pair of summons at the same time.

And a comment on your Oblivion issues; there came a point where I realized fighting was pointless. From then on I just blitzed every oblivion gate; ran past every fight just shielding and healing til I got the sigil and that's a win.

It is a bit Ghetto but it makes you alert that there are enemies stronger than you, if the game was a breeze i wouldn't play it.

I do understand what you mean. I play on master and my high level (61) character plays with 460-500 armor rating with a shield (out of choice, I could get 567 if I wanted), 400 hp and 60% magic resistance. I limit my 1h weapons to 70 for maces, and 40-50 ish for swords/daggers. mace+shield, destruction+destruction or dagger+sword, it doesn't feel right doing a fast triple swing with a heavy mace.

I never use health potions as I feel it's cheap, unless I actually stop my player for a few seconds to 'drink' the potion. I use restoration to heal, 330 health and stamina per expert spell.

This is why skill is important, I have four enemies that my character is challenged by, draugr deathlord ebony archers, melee briarhearts, ancient dragons and high level mages. Deathlords not so much as incinerate kills them so fast, it takes my character a mere 3-4 seconds to kill deathlords with a perked incinerate.

Trying to avoid those 200 damage arrows whilst attacking melee deathlords is hard, or avoiding the 200 damage ancient dragon bite followed by breath. The become ethereal shout is my main defence, gives me a free power attack with stagger followed by another. Most enemies have a predictable attack style, frost trolls, melee deathlords, briarhearts/ravagers so I can usually dodge them. For mages I usually just charge in and get as much stagger in as I can, don't let them heal.

I think the problem is at high levels, they're are sufficiently challenging enemies, but too many weak enemies that you usually encounter, that hardly scratch my health if I'm hit. This is what makes me lower my armor rating, at the cost of stronger enemies hitting like a truck. I can only talk from a master difficulty perspective, played it from the start on all characters.

I've always played on Adept, level 57 now, and I agree that most enemies are a piece of cake now, with a few truly difficult opponents, and none in between. I've had times where a Dragon has landed and me and Lydia have dealt with it within 20 or 30 seconds, hand to hand. Yet sometimes it takes us 30 minutes and many deaths on my part, and I end up having to just save the game every single time I get a hit.

Longknife, I thought it was already widely accepted that Skyrim is poorly balanced, and the lousy combat system doesn't help one bit. Click click click POTION click click click. Magic users killing you? Chug chug elemental resistance. That's all you can do because Skyrim doesn't have the better combat of Demon's Souls, Kingdoms of Amalur, Dark Messiah, Mount & Blade, Vindictus, Condemned, The Witcher 2, etc.

Other rpg games have great combat, but not Skyrim. And it doesn't change over time, same strategy. Spend points on those boring perk bonuses to your weapon skill so that you can do what you've already been doing but deal more damage. Nevermind that leveling the skill should already improve damage. Better yet, smithed and enchanted weapons will do wonders. But that makes the game pointless, so you stick with weaker weapons to gimp yourself for challenge. And then some other enemy will out-badash you or hit the killmove and there is nothing you can do about. Unfortunately, poor balancing at fault.

You probably increased the difficulty to Master because you began kicking ash on everything too soon. So now you must deal less damage but receive more. That's what you had to do and now there are those too easy and those that murder you, not by actual strategy but by being amplified by algorithm. Play Skyrim the way it was meant to be played and you get the problems you've mentioned. Outsmart the system with smithing / enchanting and you've broken it. Serious balancing issues. Getting stronger breaks the game by making it pointlessly easy, you proved that when you shoved the slider all the way to master.

Skyrim is an improvement, mostly by fixing the problems Oblivion had, but boo to the fighting system. Maybe Dawnguard has some surprise combat overhaul for us, better it happen sooner than 6 years later.