Well, that is slightly different...... mostly because that is adding content... or rather adding another variable.... WHICH is basically what I said. It changes the dynamic of the game a LITTLE and thus would be a LITTLE more interesting. Played games like that before... Quite a lot actually. Finding ways of bypassing armour becomes second nature after a while.

I'd still rather see more Thu'um variety in dragons though.

I love how you both are arguing for the same thing now. You both want the challenge to ramp up in quality ways, not just buffing stats that already exist. Which is what we all want I think...

What's disappointing, is that there are apparently recorded lines of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0i4sO_b0jo shout dialogue for just about every dragon in the game...which implies that they planned on having dragons use more shouts but ditched it for some reason.

I completely agree and I would never want them to do this.


Alright well now we get to it! Can you think of any ways to help me tackle that south side without Bethesda or modders doing anything? I'm stumped.

I don't really want more of a challenge. I wouldn't care if the dragons had their health lowered to compensate for the extra armour. Just making it play out differently would work for me.



Alright... What is one non-mandatory thing you ALWAYS do when you play through the game?
Or for that matter, what is one thing which you never done that you COULD do regularly during the game?
Have you played as both Werewolf and Vampire?

... Actually... that is it. Perfect idea. I did this for a while myself, so I know how fun it was.
Clearing out a cave normally is one thing.... But have you ever tried going through bandit caves as a werewolf, constantly feeding on corpses to try and keep the wolf form ALL the way through the cave? Mad rush. Totally fun. Or heck... the Stormcloak / Imperial war... as a werewolf. Just killing pretty much everyone. Sheer hilarity! One of my characters werewolved just about everything... never fast-travelled... never used weapons nor armour.... Was all sorts of mad fun.
Hircine's ring... That thing.
Go fetch if you haven't done a total wolf-out playthrough yet!

No it's not, not at all.

You say that like someone who has never played D&D...
Or perhaps like someone who doesn't know the difference between Armour rating and Damage Reduction...

If you're adding an armour threshold to the damn beasties besides just having their health to worry about.... then you're adding a variable... and changing the game, rather than just "making it challenging".

Same universe as you mate, but I find a challenging game fun. I don't think that's odd either. Why would I want to play a game where I just steam roll everything? Yeah, that's really fun...

google... 'Skyrim pacifist'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2d2KRIUYCM

I love the crazy stuff folks get up to in games

I'm not adding any variable. Armor is already a variable in the game. Enemies already have armor numbers set to them.

Then what the hell does it do? Can't be all that much, and it doesn't seem to me like it would do any more than raising health would, in that case.

Making combat more difficult isn't the only way to make an RPG more challenging.

I mean, really, if you put it on master and you're still breezing through content, then maybe you've played too much Dark Souls.

Most enemies have 0 armor skill or perks, so even an enemy in full Daedric only has around 100 or so armor rating. Also, dragons and all other non humanoid creatures generally have 0 armor rating. It's already in the game, but largely negligible. Enemies instead are given largely inflated hit points, that do little to mitigate high damage attacks.

There's a rather big difference between having 50 Armor with 500 Health and 10 Armor with 2,000 Health. Especially if you then take that 10 Armor person and give them 3,000 more Health.

Like I said, if all you're doing is upping Health, I'm still doing the same amount of damage to you. If you then stack things like Crit, Enchantments, etc, that's extra free damage stacked on top of the already high amount of, Armor free, damage.

If Armor, or other resists are put in place, the initial damage, and subsequent damage, is lowered initially while Health is only boosted a little bit.


This.

Those enemies with 0 Armor, no matter what difficulty I am playing, I will still do 500 damage to... and because they have 50,000 Health, I have to hit them far more often.

With Armor, I can do up to 500 damage, when you factor in Perks and such, but not every hit is going to do 500 damage.


Soti, I really have to say that perhaps you need to play more games, especially multiplayer ones.

Knowing the difference between no armor + giant health and armor + moderate health is really very basic and is showcased all the time in multiplayer games.

There is a difference between fair challenge and just arcade punishingly hard.
When a game makes you understand, or at least gives the option for you to try and understand why you failed it can be quite fun for anyone to improve and try again.
But challenge where you need to be able to see the future or have played the game a few dozen times to understand is not fun, well, at least not to most people.

I'd personally like to see more difficulty options in skyrim, but most people who feel the game is to easy just need to stop using the smithing and enchanting to get godlike weapons.



In the game tough the problem with difficulty is that only the damage multiplier changes amd the health of enemies just goes up, while the underlying stats stay the same, resistances, perks, armor values, etc.
It sounds like more difficulty on paper but when it comes down to it a good player can still cut trough the enemy like a hot knife trough butter, extra health and damage only makes a fight last longer and more health potions or healing needed.

I think if acces to perks, armor and resistances where given to npcs at higher difficulty levels instead of just health and damage it would result in a much more varied gameplay, making choise matter more instead of how much time one is willing to spend hitting the enemy with their blade of slaying +500.

I mean, if the enemy actually had armor my choise between using a mace and the perks relating to it instead of a sword would be an actual factor now, or wouldn't it?

Well in my orignal post in this thread (early on page 1), I was suggesting to anyone that plays on PC a mod which increases the difficulty, but in a more interesting way than just raising the health & damage of NPCs. If you play on PC, take a look at it: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=6176

Which is what I have been saying.

I wonder if there could be a way that certain enimies could be adjusted to an indvidual pc's skill set? although the fact that grinding skills is probabal for perk points till lvl 60-81 would proabably throw a monkey wrench in there.

I dunno why when ever I think of this issue I visualize stat sliders... you know where in some games you would have a list of stats, each with a horizontal bar next to it... moving 1 forward would reduce another...

I guess a damage cap could be one way of dealing with the issue...

One of the reasons they got rid of the class system was stated as being ( and I think it a valid reason ) that they didnt want players to be forced to pick particular paths with out actually knowing or understanding the implications and applications of the decisions within the game world.... which is understandable.... but mabey a later declaration of a major, within the narritive would be a beter alternative, it could provide a way for the game to percieve your character, both narritively and within the mechanics... and also add an aditional layer of complexity at that point in regards to the implimentation of governing attributes.

But all Ideas and arguments aside, more that likely the game just is what it is, so we might as well just enjoy it the best we can... and hope that Bethesda hasent decided that theyve got everything down to a science and continue to try and learn from their endevors.

I think this is an astute observation and would probably satisfy me. When I played on Master, all it did was take longer and I chugged more potions in battle. The battles were "hard" but they weren't "challenging". I think if I were to play through again, with no patches made to the game the rule I would have to set for myself is no using potions. Ignore Alchemy altogether. It feels cheap to be able to pause in the middle of battle and chug my way to full health. Restoration Magic would keep me in the fight and force me to make better decisions about how I engage.

WOW, REALLY? I just went into a Fort with Mages all over the flipping place. The reg. mages themselves weren't that hard. But the frikking "Storm Wizard" was OHKing me over and over again.

And this is ALL ON ADEPT. Yes, I have difficulty sometimes with ADEPT.

Very easily.

In games like League of Legends, some characters have Passive abilities that do such things as the more consecutive attacks they land, the faster their attack speed is, or the more enemy characters around them, the more armor they receive.

It would be fairly easy to put a passive trait on some enemies that does something like "gain X damage, or X armor penetration for every X armor the player has."

That\s not difficulty problem, thats a balance problem between melee and magic in the relation of the player and the NPCs.
Wich is also partially to blame to the health increasemants the NPC gets.

NPCs get tons of health making the magic of players in the game horrible against them, however, players only get so much HP while the magic still does the same damage against them.
Your 90 points lightning bolt tickles the enemy, their 90 points bolt removes half of your health.



I think this is also a factor in the games difficulty problems, wich again, would be negated more if NPCs got acces to perks and armor instead of tons of bloody health.

Pretty much. It's one of the things that seriously hampers balance in Beth's games. NPCs should have been made and designed to follow the same rules as players, having access to all the same perks, skills, equipment upgrades, racial powers, etc. If they actually followed all the rules players did, the devs would actually have to balance the perks better because the player could find themselves on the receiving end of the same abilities they are using.

I personally have been beheaded twice... They do have some perks lol.

Not exactly. NPCs often have cherry picked sets of abilities that are very limited. They may have one or two standout abilities, but nothing truly notable. We don't see enemy thieves/assassins one shot sneak attacking, or mages stagger locking players. Or enemies using frenzy and fear on us and our allies, or enemy dragons shouting us off cliffs.