Um, my (master from the start) level 60 destruction mage would disagree. You clearly just svck with destruction, so you blame it. If I use a destruction potion (of which I have 100+) I can kill an ancient dragon in 12 dual incinerates? Is that weak on master? Against a dragon with the equivalent of 6000 health?!

Why comment if you have no idea, without the potion I could kill it in ~25 dual incinerates. Which sounds a lot, but you couldn't get no where near that damage level with archery without exploiting crafting.

To the OP complaining about master, do you use crafting? Or should I ask, do you heavily exploit crafting?

Go on, OP. Regale us with tales of your BAMFness. We're all fascinated. Really.

If you played WOW you're probably expecting things like boss abilities, thats not in TES.

All dificulties should not be scrapped for harder ones because of the solemn way YOU like to play. Back when I was a WOWer I noticed these traits on that forum too. the 1% wanting to go back to "vanilla difficulty" despite everybody liking WoTLK as it was. Now it's lost 1/6th of its playerbase and announced a new expansion less than a year after it's last one.

Anyway, If you're looking for a real challenge just use one one handed weapon. No shield. Still too easy? Light armour. Too easy still? No armour. Fists instead of weapons? No magic?

I think the problem is that alot of the people on these forums are experienced with TES and min maxing and that the difficulties are clearly for average players also level scaling there should be some dungeons that are lvl 65-70 with some really good loot for us experienced players

The difficulty failure is also a result of the level up system. Putting your level up points health gives you a massive advantage over your enemies, allowing you to soak up a lot more hits.

Thats why I dont ever increase my health.

My first character was also a 2 hander, and he could steam roll through anything. Now I have an assassin character specializing in archery, one handed (daggers), sneak, light armor and alchemy and it is HARD and FUN. I had to turn down the difficulty to expert. There are so many enemies that I cannot possibly stand toe to toe with, so it forces me to be cunning and sneaky, and if I get caught, I am screwed. WAndering around the wilderness can be very hazardous. With my 2H warrior even the most fearsome creatures are just annoyances. My warrior is level 45, and my assassin - thief is only level 23 right now. I suggest you give it a try.

you serious?

i got a sword and shield warrior and today i just missed taking up my shield ONE time and that stupid draug deathblabla overlord thingy took like half my life. that's on adept. master difficulty would mean one hit dead without shield up. do you use alchemie, enchanting and smithing? i only use smithing and very, very little enchanting.

if i fight human npcs, yes, i feel like a god sometimes and think: "hmm maybe raise the difficulty", but than i get into one of this damn nord ruins and this draugr deathblabla blablabla thingies bring me back to earth... ... or tamriel.

I'm calling BS on the OP. Level 30 twohander, Master difficulty and being able to beat bosses with no strategy? No matter what you do, those guys can one or two shot you. Unless you call the dog of the guy next door a boss because it has a name?

yep you think the game is to easy till you go into a high level dragur dungeon

I tend to agree. I started my first character on master. I just finished my 5th. I've played everything from an assassin to an archer to a warrior to a mage, and it was not a huge challenge on master. Even a destruction mage is easy.

Because everyone is just as skilled at games as the OP...

Yea, we might need more difficult levels, but please don't remove the easier levels. Not everyone's a combat maniac you know. Im sure there are people out there who like to roleplay characters like merchants or whatever, strutting around in fine clothes and all that. And easy difficulties make that possible.

On expert my level 31 two hander/archer still runs into problems from time to time, I find it hard to believe that you 're just steamrolling through enemies without any tactics or exploits on master. Post your stats,Im curious and want to see what Im doing wrong since I've only had the game since launch and still find it challenging(not counting dragons).

Increasing difficulty merely increases enemy health and damage, it does not make them smarter nor does it significantly change the way you deal with them.

I'm sure once the construction kit is released, there will be stronger monsters and more importantly, larger spawns. Currently there are few fights where you are really outnumbered badly.

Mods that double or triple the spawn rate can easily mean three or four times the difficulty and limit the usefulness of impact stun locks and stealth kills.

In the meantime, you can amuse yourself with slightly harder combat by typing the following command in the console:

player.placeatme 640b7 10

Have fun!

Difficulty is fine. I'm playing a level 23 Mage, and I'm either killing enemies in a few shots at range, or I'm getting killed in a few hits at close range. Enemies only get close when there are a lot of them and I can't perma-stun them.

The difficulties could do a lot more than just make the enemies sword/arrow sponges

e.g
- Tougher enemies appearing at lower levels
- Enemy archers have a higher percentage to hit
- smarter AI than just rush the player (however this should be in all difficulties)
- less loot dropped

If they had things like this I would be more inclined to turn my difficulty up

There should definitely be a higher level difficulty for sure. Not ofc to make the game overall more difficult - the easy difficulties are about right for "Easy", it's simply that "Hard" is not hard enough...
And inb4 (well, after actually) the usual comments about limiting yourself and how crafting and enchanting is an exploit: NO, IT IS NOT! Exploiting the mechanics is using the alchemy/enchanting/smithing loop, not simply getting everything to 100, then using a couple + enchanting/smithing potions/items for your gear. That's playing the game as it was designed to be played. And NO, if the game is too easy, going in naked is not the solution. The whole point of RPGs is to constantly strive to be better. That's the reason we play the game, do the dungeons and gather our gold in the first place. If we strap that then there's no point to be playing it as an RPG anymore - we might as well just type "tgm" in the console and go take a walk around Skyrim... it's one think choosing to play as a character that doesn't focus on being good in combat (thief for example) and another to focus on NOT being good at combat...

The problem is that there can't be any harder level of difficulty the way Bethesda decided to implement the difficulty settings, which is damage modificators. Any worse than the Master difficulty on the same mindset, and the game will either be broken difficult because you die in one hit no matter what, or no difference at all because you already died in one hit on Master...
And here is my personal gripe: using solely damage modificators for the difficulty settings is simply wrong. Mainly because, in order to work properly, it forces the game to be "flat" in the way enemies work. Damage modificators will have little effect vs enemies that rely on high defence/resistance and have low attack, and even less on those that rely on controling/agility etc skills. So you have to code in only enemies that have a flat behaviour and scaling - raw power, hore hp goes with more damage, and that's it.
Which is what happens with skyrim... most NPCs will just try to melee you head on or at the most shoot you with a bow until you get close. Mages will usually just spam you with destruction magic or summons, and rarely heal/oakflesh/ward themselves. No controling side-effects, no illusion, nothing. And generally, the harder they hit the harder they die. Apart from a couple of disarming shouts/projection magic from a few Draugr bosses, there is little variation in the enemies approach...

In short: in action games like Skyrim, the difficulty should affect the AI, not simply damage received/dealt. That way, there can be better difficulty scaling AND much better variety in combat. The way things work in Skyrim though, it's pretty much at it's limit (I've once cheated my way to lv82 with all perks, the best possible armour (though not upgraded, but with over-the-top-OP dual enchantments and near the armour cap nontheless) and some random draugr deathlord killed me from full health with 1 arrow... you can't possibly make it any harder with damage modifiers alone...)

That's like me IRL. maybe I'm the dovakiin and I just don't know it...? That or my wife needs to review her cooking...

My bad, let my clarify.

Novice-Apprentice difficulty Destruction mage at level 50 utilizing no crafting skills = Expert-Master difficulty Warrior at level 50 utilizing no crafting skills.

Being forced to use Alchemy to make a Destruction mage a viable option massively contradicts the concept of making the type of build you want, and I'd say a Destruction mage is not an outlandish build that svcks because you choose to play that way.

Why use god mode if the game is too easy? Wouldn't it be more challenging if your character could actually die?

Lol.
Getting one shot is mad easy brah.

Query: how many of those who feel Master difficulty is 'too easy' do not take their own fatality rate into account?

I'm honestly wondering here; I play Dead-is-Dead, and would never consider playing Master unless I did some serious meta-gaming so that I could get through dungeons without being summarily one-shot by either a trap or a stupidly powerful boss.

Yeah, I know that at high levels and with crafting abuse the game gets too easy no matter what, but first you have to get to that point, and on Master that's a brutal (and often fatal) journey. In the interest of full disclosure: I do not use companions, which is almost certainly greatly increasing my risk factor.

Nope.

Also, Destruction is fine even on master.

The problem isn't the difficulty. The game isn't about challenge. If you want that, you want a different game. Beth's game are about exploring, not challenge. Narrative, not obstacles.

The actual problem is the same as most companies: poor idea of what "difficulty" actally means. It doesn't mean enemies with more health doing more damage. It means (or should mean) different enemies, different encounters, different experiences, etc. Bungie did this with Halo. Valve did it to a lesser extent with the original Half-Life. Konami did it with Silent Hill franchise, at least SH 2 and 3. Those are about the only examples I can think of where difficulty was handled even remotely close to how it should be.

wholeheartedly agree! the dead is dead gameplay rule is one that i love to use in fallout3, new vegas and oblivion. and, i know i'll be doing it soon in skyrim.