-this- It would not be fun to fight an enemy that had 2 mill health. At all.

So what is your take on New Vegas's optional "hardcoe Mode" (independent of the standard difficulty settings) ... or the Way of the Samurai 3 "Instant Kill" mode (which technically renders the concept of damage somewhat obsolete as the point becomes hit or be hit)?

Just saying that I don't mind those sorts of things so much because they're changing the dynamic of the game rather than just making things take longer in some linear fashion.

make the game more difficulty instead of crippling your options:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=4406#

all it does is simply changes the damage dealt and damage multipler from master difficulty.

If I may post on this... I generally enjoyed hardcoe mode. I loved the fact ammo had weight, and it really made me think about what I was going to take out into the wild, and how I was going to play. I found the constant nagging to drink and eat to start to get quite repetitive. It started to pull me out of the game. I'd like to have seen an "auto-dispense" system, where you had to carry the food and water and it would be consumed automatically as you were in the gameworld.

You know what you said to that other guy about immaturely jumping to the wrong conclusion? You just did so yourself. Congrats...
I'm not much of one for board-games... generally, at least. Most of them lack replay value. I'm alright with playing things like solitaire... But I wouldn't be playing a game without content any more than I'd play a game which consisted of bashing my head against a wall for an indeterminate length of time to win....

An enemy having 2 million health is balanced and challenging to deal with if you do 50,000-500,000 damage per hit.

But of course, you're not responding to me anymore.

You are posting my thoughts before I think them....creepy.

I didn't get any warning messages about food nor water.... as I slept, ate and drank entirely too often just in case they might THINK of cropping up. But even if I had, I don't think it would have overly bothered me. Sometimes I saw some interesting things while searching for the nearest bed / water-source...
If anything, I would have been slightly MORE bothered by the weight of ammo..... except that I circumvented that entirely by using Melee weapons (and that laser gun with regenerating ammo). As I said before... since I knew exactly the different problems I would face beforehand, I changed my play dynamic to account for them... and it gave me a different perspective of the game.


But honestly, that couldn't fascinate me half as much as an instant kill mode does.
The difference in play style between "Hard" and "Instant Kill" on WotS3 is immense....
I can imagine full well what it would be like on Skyrim. You'd need to be much more aware of your surroundings, and trying to gather more powerful weapons / armour would be entirely skipped in favour of getting faster weapons with longer reach. DPS ceases to play a part where one hit always kills.... To be quite honest, I rather like that sort of thing.... at least until I run into an enemy who is faster than me AND has better range.... (which in WotS3, I didn't).

What conclusion did I jump to exactly?

Why do you keep assuming that by "challenging" or "difficult" I'm meaning you have to be in the fight for 8 hours, or have to re~play it 30 times until you finally win?

Challenge =/= smash your head against the wall.

I've never played either of those games, but if they take the core of the game and integrate more challenging aspects specifically for those gamers that know what the hell they are doing, then I can't knock it. It's what I want to happen here. I understand that there are different types of gamers and we all look for different things in a game. This post has proved that to me. I don't want to change the gameplay for all users because of one person's wishes, thats why difficulty modes exist. Don't make the whole game harder for everyone, let people chose. A lot of my suggestions had ways of integrating for easier difficulties for this reason. If there were some standalone mode to accomplish that, then I would support it. In TES there doesn't seem to be, just a slider.

The problem for me with TES is that slider doesn't make any significant additions to difficulty. It makes the "grind" that much longer because all they did was change damage output. My suggestions would affect difficulty in more significant ways, and I hope you can see that. I'm all for lateral difficulty challenges. It's like Halo, you can just shoot them up and hope you get top kill, or you can play an entirely different mode of play like capture the flag where kills are completely insignificant to the win condition. I like those too.

You seemed to jump to the conclusion that I'd be satisfied in a game which consisted of winning without doing anything... i.e. without content.
And funnily enough, you're claiming that you aren't favouring the without-content angle either.....

But honestly... just what kind of challenge are you expecting that isn't just lengthening the process or forcing repetition? I can't think of any that aren't either of those WITHOUT adding more content, which in and of itself does not necessarily involve changing difficulty (and moreover, adding harder content doesn't help any more than adding non-hard content).

Pickpocketing is actually pretty difficult if you dont cheat by autosaving before each attempt and pressing f9 soon as you get caught, as for lockpicking its far too easy, amount of times I borderline smashed my pc up on average locks in Oblivion is testement when i can beat the hardest of locks quickly with 10 snaps max.

Im all for the eating/sleeping/drinking to be added, loved it in FONV hardcoe mode.

Alchemy is fine in terms of using potions you make, however they do sell for far too much which brings up the main problem... money is so easy to save up, only just finishing whiterun as my first city and im already floating 10k.

It isn't about difficulty at all really.
While in both cases it does carry the implication in the name of being difficulty-based...... the former (hardcoe Mode) adds more to the game...... while the latter (Instant Kill) forcibly changes the dynamic of the game and the way it is played.
Essentially... it isn't about making it harder.... so much as adding difference. Qualitative difference, rather than merely quantitative.

Right and I agree with you there. Both are appealing to me. But I don't see Skyrim or any TES game being given that qualitative difference, so though my suggestions may seem like grinding to you, because ultimately we'll get the same results, mine just took longer, its the only way I can see of giving the game something more, for those of us that want the extra challenge.

It's fairly simple. Currently, for dragons and other enemies, when they level up they are simply given a boat load more health and that's it. So, regardless of what difficulty you are on, if your sword does 500 damage, you still do 500 damage to said enemy. You basically negate their armor (if they even have any).

A way to put a stop to this is to boost their armor so that, on harder enemies or harder difficulties, your 500 damage sword now does... say 350-450 damage, depending on the enemy.

This does not make fights last forever, it does however make the enemy actually tougher rather than just having an ocean (instead of a lake) of Health.

No extra content needed. No extra grinding needed.

Bethesda aren't going to change the game in that regard, I'm fairly certain of it.

But heck... it is possible someone might be able to mod the game to add different modes of play eventually.

And putting aside the word "challenge" for now (it leaves a bad taste in my mouth)... Why don't you just play the game differently? Obviously some aspects of the game aren't giving you satisfaction, so it stands to reason that you should try to make do without them. Change the way you play. Surely that would resolve the issue completely?


Heck, among the stranger things I've done in the past (that might make me seem like a hypocrite)..... I used to really love Pokémon Red. Used to know the game inside out. Got tired of replaying it normally, so one day I started playing the game with the Gameboy held upside-down. And when I completed it like that, I did an entire playthrough of Pokémon Red in the dark... by sound alone. Even I think in hindsight that was a bit of a silly waste of time... but still.
Then I went and completed Pokémon Gold in Japanese... before it was out in English. Heh... crazy times.





So instead of hitting it once or twice and it is dead.... you have to hit it 3 or 4 times and it is dead? Aside from the fact that the difference is relatively minimal, it is STILL grind of sorts. It is still achieving the same result but taking a little bit longer to do it at no extra gain. Where is the satisfaction in that?
Personally, I'd rather have dragons that use different Thu'ums but the same health than dragons having to be hit more before they die.

Not everyone enjoys easy games.

Thats why they put in difficulty settings. Sadly they don't help much unless you use mods.


I would love a "hardcoe Mode" mod or setting that has everything the OP described.

And I still tend to put that squarely on not being challenged in their everyday lives... but I guess it doesn't really matter.
Quite often, the desires of most people are completely alien to me. Nonsensical. Don't suppose I'll ever really understand.

LOL! Yeah I realize Bethesda isn't going to change the game, I said that before. I still enjoy it nonetheless. I tried setting my own rules, but it gets tedious, especially without that reward. Someone was saying earlier that the difference is some people like to be punished for failure and other people like to be rewarded with success. But that's the same thing. Just because I want a little punishment to set me back, doesn't mean I don't want rewards as well. And since the game isn't participating when I set my own rules, it gets pretty lame. So I'll tough it out on Xbox and see what happens, but I guarantee myself that I'll buy it for PC one day too.

Hell I bought Morrowind 4 times. Vanilla and GotYE for Xbox, GotYE for PC, then I torrented a port of it for Mac, so I guess I only really bought it 3x. Lol.

I really couldn't care less how difficult combat is or should be. I really don't think that combat difficulty is what an RPG is all about. I just wish questing wasn't so ridiculously simplified.

Its called opinion. I can't get into games that are too easy.

has nothing to do with my personal life.

No. As I said, currently it's a matter of having to hit it 3... 4... 20... 80... 150 more times, because they all they do is simply add more health.

If at level 50 you're doing 500 damage and dragons have 10,000 Health, then at at level 81 dragons have 5 million health... that's what's repetitive and makes fighting a dragon a grind.

If I'm facing a dragon that has 50 additional armor, that means my attacks could do maybe 50 less damage. Do you know what options this opens up?

It allows me, the player, to now use tactics instead of just running up and repeatedly hitting L/R/L/R/L/R to just cut through their health.

It allows me to now go... huh, I have this Poison of Lower Armor that lasts for one hit. I'll use it to take a quick chunk out of the dragon and then maybe use some other tactics.

Quality of play > repetition of simply pressing L/R/L/R/L/R/L/R/L/R

Having enemies have access to other means of attack and defense also allows for challenge to be implemented.

A fight against a Dragon Priest would be a lot more challenging if he had a spell that allowed him to have an aura around him that disenchanted items for 30 seconds.

Meh. It is like you're treating it like you're interacting with someone else.
A different gaming experience is its own reward. You can't expect the game itself to provide it all. If you've climbed a mountain on the north side, try climbing it on the steeper south side instead... rather than sitting there complaining that the mountain needs to be taller.


Aside from the Mac bit at the end..... I did exactly the same in exactly the same order...
Uncanny!

Quite frankly, I'm the exact opposite.
To me, more difficult does not mean more fun. To be honest, I've never understood this mindset, but I just put it up to "different strokes". I have yet to run into a game that I would complain about it being "too easy'". I would not mind if such a hardcoe mode was included, as long as it did not affect how I play the game, I would simply keep playing on novice as I have been. However, if they were to spike tthe difficulty across all difficulty levels just to keep the hardcoe gamers happy, I would get very upset. That simply would not be fair.