I don't know if balance is quite the right word, but here's what I'm getting at.

Oblivion strived so hard to keep the player from getting an unfair advantage that it made it boring. The highest level weapon you could find in the game was something like a Silver Shortsword, which isn't overly impressive. This meant you could pretty much just ignore all the items placed around in the world because they're useless, and only look for items in the chests and by looting corpses to find items levelled to you.

Compare that to Morrowind, where if you knew where to look you could easily find highly useful, unique, and/or valuable items. This, to me, made exploring way more interesting because you never knew when you were going to find a daedric weapon, or a unique ring, or valuable sword, or something.


Oblivion also limited some spell effects and such. Like, you couldn't put regenerate health constant effect on a piece of armor - presumably because it might give you some unfair advantage.

Many quest rewards in Oblivion were also leveled to you so that you wouldn't get a weapon that wasn't 'level appropriate' (While at the same time making these rewards fairly useless and uninteresting).

these are just a few examples of what I mean, I hope you catch my drift. What are your thoughts?

I don't really care but I do not want one weapon in the game to be over powered and everyone would end up using it.
Case in point: Dwemer Darts in Tribunal.

Well the poll percentage on the forum is going down. We're at 24% now instead of 27.5%

There are different ways to look at balance. On the one hand you could consider the fact that some strong artifacts for Morrowind were easily accessible at a low level once you knew where they are would unbalance the game. But I think that's more of a matter of self restriction: Don't apply knowledge that your character wouldn't know. Oblivion tried the more balanced approach by having all objects be scaled to your level and without any non quest related ones hand placed, which killed exploring.


I like it when a game is a challenge, but it needs to be done in a way that doesn't involve simply boosting the damage done by the opponent, and reducing yours as you move the difficulty slider up.

Invisibility, Detect Life, Weakness to Magic and Chameleon were horribly overpowered in Oblivion.

Agreed about the leveled quest rewards and artifacts, though. They exaggerated when trying to correct some Morrowind imbalances.

I really don't see how this is pointless. Did you even read it?

I'm just bringing to light some of my potential concerns regarding balance to see who agrees with me, meanwhile leaving room for debate as to whether balance belongs in single player game at all.

So yeah, my poll has a point, your post however is useless and off topic.


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As much as I've played, I never used dwemer darts. But I do agree, if there is one better weapon everyone will end up using it and that is boring. Still, it's up to the player to choose what items they'll use, and I don't know about other people, but I usually base my chocies on roleplaying more so than what weapon is actually better.

It looks like a legitimate poll to me. Stop with the pointless complaining seriously -_-

You mean Dwemer Shock Darts. Those were typo'd to be 10x more powerful than they should have been. That's not balance, that's a bug.

What wasn't a bug was the jink blades. You pretty much don't have to worry about combat anymore once you find one of those.

Finding higher level items? No
Fighting for your life for higher level items? Yes

Morrowind did it just right, oblivion really svcked in that regard.

In an RPG you have certain stat lists wich determine your characters abilities and the abilities of those you encounter.
Any and all of these stats needs to be tweakable, and Morrowind did an amazing job at that, mostly through magic.

From the spells that boost my stats to the ones that destroy an enemies. from invisibility to levitation.
An RPG is about customisation, and control over your environment.
A game where all mechanics are hidden and untouchable is called a shooter.

Oh no, the regular Dwemer Darts(Actually called Dwarven Darts in the game) are really, really strong.

No offence but this is the worst thread and poll Ive ever seen on the internet.

Good point, yeah.

So maybe you wouldn't be able to find very good stuff just laying around ripe for the picking like in some cases in morrowind (shadowsting, master's alchemy set, daedric dagger, sword of white woe, etc.)

Instead there would be more things like Eleidon's Ward in morrowind, which require fighting through a dungeon, some high-level enemies and some locked doors to get to (or just clever use of sneaking/invisibility).

I would be cool with that.
or do you just mean that it should be like in Oblivion and the only good stuff is what leveled enemies are carrying?


Another thing that annoyed me in Oblivion was how you had to do all the mage's guild recommendation quests before you could spell make or enchant. This was probably done so that you couldn't make any cheap spells or enchantments too soon.. but again, i think this is a case of overbalancing, and spellmaking and enchanting should be available from the get-go (though expensive, perhaps)

I think balance is VERY important. You should be able to become powerful through hardwork, exploration and creating and adding to tactics as you go. Having so much stuff in Oblivion where you could easily trivialise the whole game from the get go without even trying just ruins it for me.

No. I prefer more of a static world.
Fighting tough creatures for good items. Or in very secure chests that are hard to get to. etc.

I put I really don't care because I know the game will not be horrible unbalanced so if it is a little off I really don't care.

I think there should be a few rare high level items. If there are too many then either the game is to easy or nothing is really rare or valuable. Like if there are Varla stones all over the place what would be the point of even using a regular weapon.

On the contrary, there were many ways that people could exploit oblivion and break the game. 100% chameleon for example.

And yes I do think balance is very important. I think the game should be about the same level of fun and challenge no matter what your character is good at.



You never knew when you were going to find them? Sounds to me like you always know when you're going to find them.

Not balanced at all. Or rather, I should have the choice to make it unbalanced if that is what I like. There are far too many players whose lack of self control leads them to want limitations on things like powerful items, fast travel, etc.


Your lack of ability to not use things isn't my problem.

When you talk about things in terms of exploits, a higher level of balance is generally to be desired, because by definition, exploits are generally considered bad things. But I'm sure Skyrim will have its share of exploits, Bethesda can certainly try to reduce them, but the more freedom a game offers, the more possible exploits it's likely to have, still, it doesn't mean Bethesda shouldn't strive to make the game balanced, so long as it can be done without sacrificing too much in terms of freedom.

Balance is important, not as important in a single player game as in multiplayer, but it should not be necessary to ask if it is something to be desired or not. Ideally, the game should be balanced in such a way that it takes hard work to become powerful, but when you succeed, the rewards should make it worth the effort. Becoming powerful should be the rewards of overcoming great obstacles, and the greater the obstacle, the greater the rewards. Which in practical terms means that, usually, a chest with a hard lock should have better loot than it than one with an easy lock, or that the items dropped by stronger enemies should usually be stronger than what you find from weaker enemies. You should not encounter level one bandits with Daedric weapons, but if I fight through a dungeon full of the strongest enemies in the game, I expect to get something better than a suit of iron armor and a chest full of forks. And in general, Betheseda should strive to make every possible character build, aside from intentionally crippling yourself viable, and have chances to get ahead in the game, not that it should always be easy, or that all characters should be able to succeed at all things, if I make a stealth character who is only lightly armed and armored, I don't necessarily expect to be able to beat a warrior in a head on, one on one fight, but I expect to have enough oportunities in the game to make playing such a character worhwhile, at the same time, I don't want any character type in the game or any item to be the "I win" button.

And yes, I do want to be able to find some static, non-leveled, high level items placed in the world, the lack of worthwhile loot that isn't leveled was one of the design decisions in Oblivion I did not like. There are other ways to keep glass or Daedric out of the hands of level one characters besides making it not exist in the game world at all until that point. If the game was well balanced, making it guarded by sufficiently difficult obstacles would suffice, and really, if somehow, by great skill on the player's part, or sheer luck, you manage to get your character through a cave full of high level monsters and find a really powerful at the end despite being very weak yourself, you've earned the reward you get, there's no reason why you should be denied it just because you've yet to reach an arbitrary level by which point the developers decided you were ready to fet such strong items.



You did in later playthroughs, once you knew the gameworld, but when you were exploring a dungeon you'd never explored before, you had no idea what you might find. By comparison, in Oblivion, without mods, I typically had a good idea what I'd find in any given dungeon, since it likely was going to be something I could find in any dungeon with the same type of enemies at the same level.

I've got no problem with exploits existing, as long as they don't go ridiculously overboard. Alchemy in MW went ridiculously overboard, and the abundance of high-powered items just lying around for the taking was excessive. At the other extreme, Oblivion gave you no incentive to do anything, because there was NOTHING better than what you could find nearby, and you could milk the same places over and over. Too much balance can be as bad as not enough.

I'd like the various primary roles to be balanced, but that is about it. So people who want to focus on being a fighter or thief or whatever don't feel penalized. In an open game not all roles will be created equal, but if the main 3 roles are balanced I think you are in a good spot. I don't care much about it being balanced against the world though.

Balanced doesn't always mean that you can't get 'ahead' of the game.

So called exploits should be possible, but they should not be too obvious and require some thinking and creativity.
The game should then anticipate you using them by having lot's of areas where it's mighty hard to survive. That shouldn't be too much of a problem as long as the game is big enough.

This way the game doesn't get frustrating for a weak and poor character, but also not boring for the OCD veteran power-player as both have plenty to do.

According to whom?

That right there is the problem - "if you knew where to look". Who came up with the idea that the world for my second character should be exactly the same as for my first character? My second character knows NOTHING about the game world, and I shouldn't be able to exploit my own knowledge about it. I realize some are unavoidable. If there was a million hiding places in the game world, really hard to find, and you never knew "where to look", THEN I'd like to have powerful unique items hiding in plain view, so to speak. Otherwise it just becomes a "go fetch" game, and I've never played a dog... The game could even monitor the gamer and have difficulty values assigned to these hiding spots. If the gamer seems to be finding a lot of these, then up the hiding spot difficulty a notch or two to make it harder for him. If a level 20 character haven't found a single piece of powerful unique equipment, he may not be the best explorer in the world, so lower the difficulty by hiding stuff in more obvious places so that he too can find it.

Of course balance is important. In Morrowind it was pretty easy to get tons of money even in the low levels. Well, that's because every valuable item was in same place. At least some of the valuable (doesn't mean the same as good) items should be at random places. Oblivion did this pretty well, but at higher levels there were too many valuable items in certain caves (maybe because they respawn?), at least when you compare it to loss of money, like buying repair hammers, arrows or lockpicks. So, there should be better, although much expensive things to buy from shops. Anybody else had tons of useless money in Oblivion? :tongue: