Smithing was the first skill I leveled, with enchanting being a close second, and I have yet to have a problem with any trash mob. I have died a total of three times, twice to giants, and once to a dragon.
If you're smithing is indeed that much higher than your combat skills, make yourself better weapons. Then enchant them to be amazing.

The OP is right on almost everything.

With #4 they should make other requirements to equip certain things. The problem is they nuked all the attributes so they would have to make other skill requirements to pull it off. Like wielding epic bows should have a dexterity requirement and endurance requirement, forcing a player to be X level to use them, plus having attributes would allow for some magic scaling, damage scaling, etc.

I enjoy Skyrim's removal of classes but I still think one should pick major/minor skills so you could minor in smithing and not level from it, enabling the player to do some odd builds if you want, without affecting your level which affects enemies.

I'm playing a jack of most trades and it's been a smooth ride. I figured I'd have to specialize more to succeed but you don't.

no no no no no.

Anyone ever hear of variety? It's a good thing. If you want to play WoW or other games like it, feel free. Also, you might want to look up UO. I know this is shocking, but there were games, even MMOs before WoW, and some of them were skill based. So your title is quite wrong.

read the sentence again. Take a breathe. Read one more time. Now rethink what you posted and get back to me when you reply to the section you quoted.

You must be some kind of [censored] moron for claiming that Skyrim is a MMO.

real mature. I am claiming that the leveling system of almost every rpg in existance including WoW is basically the same because for design purposes, it cause no flaws in balance or extremism in player strength. Watch a video of a warrior 1 shot a dragon the second it lands and tell me that doesnt take away from the whole concept of the game.

Your first mistake was comparing Skyrim to WoW.

That is their own fault for abusing game exploits.
It affects nobody on the count of it being a single player game.

OP is right: the game is really unbalanced and the scaling is broken but he recieves only hate becouse hes bringing up WoW.
While it shouldnt be as hard to max smithing like in WoW and i dont thing you should have specific areas for specific lvls, [censored] needs to be capped (even in fallout weapons had requirements).
As it is now you can get the best gear at lvl 10 and only get weaker as the game drags on unless you decide to handicap your potential early on.

One thing level scaling does is take away a sense of progression. So for example, lets say you come across a bad ass triple headed fireball casting open world boss at level 10 and you get your butt kicked, and then you come back at level 15 and do OK but still get your butt kicked, so you work hard and level up to 20 with your brand new sword and spells and you kill him. Now you feel pretty bad ass. If you are able to kill most things at most levels then the sense of character progression is blunted and the point of levelling up is marginalised.

Can't believe how many people are [censored]storming about the MMO comparison. Either you didn't play many MMORPGs in your life or you didn't realize that no comparison is perfect, ever. The OP clearly mentioned the similarities and how Skyrim could learn from the solutions MMO provide. Nothing to freak out about here.

And I agree. People say single player doesn't need balance, but that is wrong in my opinion. All choices should be at least trying to be equally fun and rewarding, one way or another. Maybe a better word to use than balance is coherence. Skyrim's skill system doesn't have much of it. For example, the issue with smithing iron daggers granting just as much exp as anything else, whereas you need to block higher level enemies to effectively increase your blocking skill. Or that you level speech without even wanting to, just by buying and selling things (how does going into a store and picking an item increase my speechcraft or mercantile abilites?). Or that all useful magic effects can be obtained via alchemy, whereas you can't even cure your disease as a restoration master.

I played WoW for the first 6 months of 2011. It's really stupid to compare a 7th anniversary MMO to a 2 week not yet patched Single Player game but whatever:

Rebuttal 1: Level scaling? How's that level 13 required weapon working on your Level 1 Gnome? You have to be level 58 to enter the first expansion, 68 the next, 80, the last. The game isn't really an open world anymore anyway. After level 15, you might make an appearance in the world here and there, but you are primarily Dungeon Finder grinding (min and max levels here of course). The game is meant to be balanced at 85 anyway. At 85.... Normal--->Heroic---Normal Raid--->Heroic Raid--->Normal Raid 25 man ---> Heroic Raid 25 man... still see no scaling? (each step has minimum Item level requirements).

Rebuttal 2: Where do you think the term Trash Mob came from?

Rebuttal 3: People quit everyday because they feel their class cannot compete with another.

Rebuttal 4: Tradeskills you can't really compare. You can trade them to other players and the economy would be really messed up if you could make the best with a level 1 alt.

These games are totally different and cannot be compared but your points are followed with a bunch of disconnected thoughts that do not back your claims. In all seriousness, WoW is a fun game and if Skyrim isn't a fun game to you maybe you should think about going back?

Level scaling works best.

Having static levels = no more open world. Yeah you can go into a high level zone, but you won't get far and you wouldn't get any gear. You will be forced down a linear path to level up so you can tackle the higher level zones.

ITT people don't know what anologies are about.

Theres plenty of other reasons why MMOs are generally the same, you can blame WoW for that mind you.

Unfortunately i find current MMO a pain, until the planet is laden with optical fiber or a new communication system is invented in the next 5 years, i wont be touching them ever.

I'm gonna paste an argument from another thread in order to try and explain the meaning of level scaling in TES games:


I think I nailed down the problem you have with the system.

Point being, while it may be true the bear you meet later in the game has more HP and deals more damage than the dragon you faced earlier, if you for a second stop perceiving the game's world in numeric terms... does it matter?

I'll explain. At level 10 I fight a dragon - pretty damn challenging, takes me 30 swings or so to down, as I'm dealing 20 damage per swing and he's got like 600 hp, I need to use a few potions and so on.
At level 30 I fight a bear. He's scaled to my level, so he has 1000 hp. However, I now swing for 200 damage thanks to gear, perks and my own skill level. 5-6 strikes and he's down.

What was "easier"? Does it matter that if for some reason the level 30 bear could meet the level 10 dragon he would win?

No, because they can't exist at the same time. The level 30 bear would meet a level 30 dragon and be burned to a crisp.

And this can help understanding the rational of scaling. When I do 30 damage at level 10 and 300 at level 40, I'm not doing actually doing 10 times as much damage in the game's continuum. And brigands don't magically grow 10 times tougher. The level system's granularity is a necessity to allow me to build my character the way I want, but it doesn't represent a 1:1 growth inside the actual game's world. A daedric greatsword doesn't do 30 times as much damage as a steel greatsword, in practice, and that's why it doesn't oneshot everything. However, that granularity in numbers is necessary to allow me to enjoy progress as a player and make fine tuning to my character.

And it helps consistency and immersion. Even in fantasy fiction, great heroes that reach "high levels" wouldn't rush into a room filled with 10 thugs armed with bows without fear of being shot down. Unless you consider some of the most superhuman fantasy heroes, it's not like at the peak of their career they would slice a mountain in half with a swordswing. It's still a human being. He may now require 3 swings to kill a bandit, instead of 6, but it's still a man fighting other man.
What makes him special isn't the numeric value of his HP and damage. He didn't become magically capable to take 100 arrows without dying or to kill a man in armor with a casual sword swing. He can now behead people will a well placed blow, he knows higher level spells, he can backstab for lethal damage, he has better and better shouts and so on.

Immersion is the reason to have scaling at all.
You have scaling because you're not 500 times as powerful at the end of the game than you were when you begun; your metabolism didn't really change, your anatomy is still human, and an arrow in the eye (bugs aside) will still kill you.

one of the best posts I have ever read.

mmo's have absolutely nothing to to with rpg's in the sense rpg fans see it...imo mmo's are just boring nonsense and its a shame tes even went slightly down that path...instread they should rather go back to hardcoe rpging

Now take that same situation, toss a mage in there, watch as he either summons the conjuration OP summons that ruin the game or sit there for 2 years stunlocking the bear IF he has exploits to make destruction cost no magicka. He sure does feel more powerful in 20 minute fights now then before where he could 5 shot stuff.

But wait....That means his survivability scaled too to make up for his loss in damage.....nope. Mage will still get 2 shot.

I sense a WoW player who loves his game way too much.

This isn't WoW and this game was meant so you could go any place any time to create your own adventure.

You can leave this game and never come back now.

At low level he cannot pick up quests in higher level areas, nor can he go into dungeons. So even if he can go there, what is there to do? I have several characters in WOW , one each at max level and then lots of lowbies. They have made the leveling so easy that I wish I could go into areas several levels above me and I would survive just fine, but I may not do those quests at my level. I can't even pick herbs even though my herbalism is high enough...but my level is not. If they did this in a single person game I would find it terribly boring and there would be no reason to play. Also low levels in WOW-you want to level quickly and or do battlegrounds. It's not terribly interesting, just lots of grinds. WOW is a game that starts at max level. A single person game you do not worry about having to have the top gear, there is no sprint for the max level. It's about the telling of a story, and yes you even have the option of being completely OP.

Neither style would work if you switched ES to MMO or WOW to single player. WOW is not aimed at a single person, it's about different classes working together. Getting the best gear possible so you can do the next dungeon tier, which again you can't go into unless your gear is high enough-u r not alowed to enter, not because you will die, because the game will not let you. In ES you can go wherever you want, you do the quests because they are interesting to your character, not to level. it would be difficult to set up quests like you do in ES in WOW. Too many play and it would constantly be ruined by people giving spoilers. You are not stopped at the beginning of a dungeon in es because your level is not high enough. I'm more interested in clothing in ES that I like it's appearance, more so than needing it to make me more uber.

They are both roleplayer games-but so vastly different from each other that it makes no sense at all to compare them. One has to balance everything around other players. One has to be an enjoyable story aimed at a single person. Playing ES like Wow would be boring as a single person game. Playing WOW like ES would be like watching a movie with 5 people who already watched it and keep telling whats happening before it did.

I can not believe that I read threw all this drivel, but now when I did, I feel the need to comment...
First of all, about all those flaming him for comparing an rpg to an mmo... It is just incredible stupid, the comparison is valid, even if they are different types of games. It is like saying you can not compare this game to the real world, because one is a computer game and the other is not... there is still similarities duh....

Secondly, to those saying that the level scaling only works for pure fighters, and that training the non combat skills breaks the balance... Smithing is the most OP skills fighting-wise. You can get the best possible armor for your current level, you can also improve it to about double (yes double! ) the stats of their normal version. That is a 2x in your fighting prowess right there. As for enchanting, it is even more op, 0 cost destruction spells? :/
On the other hand, skills like lockpicking, speach and alchemy is less useful in combat situations, but they are also much harder to power lvl. And if you really do sit down and break off 200 lockpicks in one lock to up your skill, then don't go around complaining about the game being unbalanced, because grinding one skill like that is not how this game was meant to be played.

Now to the issue at hand, the level scaling. I for one think it works quite well as it is, my only problem with the current game (apart from the crashes and occasional texture crash) is the difficulty of dragons. Their power is sufficient, but their terrible tactics make them super easy. Flying away after each blast of ice lets you recover way to easy, and why they are nibbling at you instead of just eating your face in melee combat, i do not know...
the level scaling is so that you can enjoy the whole world, throughout the game. If there where no level scaling, later in the game, you would have to go threw dozens of level 10 scaled dungeons to find one that is actually changeling for your level, and vise versa. No thanks!

If you really are so stupid to max smithing, but since you made nothing but iron daggers have no gear to put on, then go out and complain about the world not being to scale, then you deserve it. The game scales as if you actually have the armor that you now can make...And if all els fails, you can always turn down the dificulty if you want to role-play and only focus on non-combat skills. But where is the realism in being able to slay a dragon with no combat training what so ever?

/toggle.idioticrant

The OP is actually asking for a linear grindfest single player RPG. He is saying they are both open world, but the open world of the MMO is an illusion. Its a totally linear experience with lots of wasted time traveling between level appropriate zones. It's a [censored] proof time svcking model that needs to die in a firery abyss. MMOs have been scientifically proven to kill more brain cells than Alzheimer's, Mad Cow, glue sniffing, republlicanism, and binge drinking added together and then multiplied by 10^10^10.