Have u gone back and played through oblivion in its entirety? Bethesda has only gotten better at what they do so far as fallout vs. Oblivion....fallout was better in its structure and its ability to allow you to do missions that felt like they had impact on u and the world..oblivion, although fun when it came out and still holds a place in my heart right next to morrowind, basically let go of ur leash right out of the gate...in fallout the exit of vault 101 was better played compared to the exit from the sewers..as well as how the main quest was done...i actually wanted to go see my dad since i just spent my tutorial makin memories with him...in oblivion i was shoved into some "destiny thing" by a guy who i had to ask who the hell he was...with which he replied O_O " IM UR MUTHER F___ KING DUDE...how have long u been down here?....woops im dead...now go find my son so he can tell u to go find
other things so he can save the world..BUT HEY old chap u do get a shiny armor that would have been for martin if he hadnt saved the world but thnx for sittin behind and watchin ya priiiiccccckkk".....kinda ranted there but u get the point...there execution on story is getting better 10x fold with every game (no pun intended with the "execution" line)

Admits?

You make it sound like they did some crime. They pretty much announced this in a GI article sometime ago

They also state "Inspired by" not "Lifted From". It's "Like Fallout 3", but I read that as "At worst, It'll be Fallout 3 style" which suits me just fine.

Fallout 3, with emphasis on "A few good hits" as opposed to 150 small hits, and less difficulty loopholes, is about as perfect as you can get in terms of the difficulty curve. Fallout 3 was one of the few RPG's that actually increased the challenge higher up, they just made the mistake of putting maybe 400-500 too much HP on the high-targets, which maybe put a bit too much "Tedium" at "Very Hard", and less opportunities for "Soldier" style characters, since if you had to rely on your Defense, you were pretty much screwed, with the Overlord's bonus damage that ignores defense.

Anything would be better than OB

The other thing OP about constant difficulty is the game type. RPGs, AA and otherwise, when of the Sorcery and Swords variety, allow for character advancement in a way that many other game types do not. Part of the games purpose and value lies in being able to see your character grow in prowess and power, and if the difficulty level remains constant in an overwhelming manner, this becomes very difficult to do.

RPGs are not like the old shooters and combat games, (who remembers Commando! lol) or even games like Mario Brothers. In those games, your character never did much power advancing. You might get additional lives so if you got yourself killed you didn't get sent back to the beginning of the game. You might get increased fire power, better bombs etc, but generally the power was in the weapon,not in you. You did not become stronger, faster, smarter, and if you did it was in a very limited fashion (and could often easily be taken back. . . Mario> SuperMario>FireMario + hit by a koopa >arggh back to regular Mario).

The Wizard&Warrior type RPGs are very different. You don't just get better equipment. You become more skilled and more powerful. And because the games are not linear (and thus are far more realistic) when you gain the attributes, you aren't leveling up just enough to take on the new, tougher monsters that you will encounter in the next level of the game, as would be the case in the more stagnant linear game play. Because the game is nonlinear, you can search out the super monsters as soon as you start the game. . . and be completely destroyed by them merely looking at you. . . but you can also build your skills and powers to the prowess of a demigod and come back much later and show them who is boss. If you go back at level 30 to fight creatures who whipped you out at level 2, and find that the still kick your assets just as easily as they kicked them way back when. . . that isn't a challange, that is a travesty of justice.

One of the primary focuses of RPGs is player/character advancement, not setting up an increasingly difficult series of game stages that become more and more arduous and challangeing until the player is exhausted. Open World RPGs allow you to advance from a mages apprentice or a wizarding student of little power, to an enormously powerful and nearly indomitable Wizard or Sorcerer like Gandalf or Albus Dubledore. It allows you to go from being a puny squire, to being Conan or even He-Man. You know as well as I that Gandalf is not going to be beaten down by some rogue gobin. No zombie or werewolf you know is going to kill Albus Dumbledore unless they catch him already in a comatose state. Conan isn't going to be killed by roadside brigands. . . and He-Man probably CAN"T be killed by road side brigands.

In an RPG in this genre your character can become truly Superhuman. Super strong, super stealthy, and SuperPowerful, with Physics altering powers at his/her disposal. You can become much more potent than the average person, than the average enemy, than the average monster. And you are MEANT to be able to do so, if you work at it.

Does this mean the game should have no challanges left? No, of course not. They should be present, but they should also be more rare. Certainly they should not be the norm. As I said in another post, if the end result of you becoming a powerful character is that the game compensates by filling the world with nothing but Balrogs, Sith Lords, Dremora Valkynaz, Storm Giants, and evil superheroes, then all plausibiltiy, even the plausibility of an Alternate secondary reality, goes straight out of the window. As to the entire point of having bothered to do all that leveling up.

Difficulty is relative. You're probably talking about the level scaling. I was not in love with FO3's scaling, but I think the level scaling in Fallout 3 was better than in Oblivion. Thankfully, influenced is a pretty loose term. So I have confidence that Skyrim's level scaling, will be better than that of Fallout 3 or Oblivion.

I didn't vote,because Bethesda has never said the difficulty would be just like Fallout 3.They just said the enemies leveling system would be similar ...big difference!

Really,I though it breathed new life into the game...

I'd like the ability to amp up the damage of both yourself and the enemies, I really hate that putting the slider down makes you a tank... but putting it up makes the enemies into tanks.

I enjoyed fallot immensely. SOme bits were easy, some bits were very hard and I had to go back to them and survival was an issue. I would be happy with FO3's scaling

re: Broken Steel
- I didn't have any problem with Fallout 3 having an "end", so the plot continuation was un-necessary.

- More importantly, the game was balanced around the power and perks you got in 20 levels. Upping the cap to 30, plus putting in more & overpowered perks, screwed things up tremendously - too many skill points, too many perks, too many HP, etc.

- And then there were the stupid "harder" enemies that they added as a sop to the vocal minority that was complaining about the difficulty.... they weren't really that much harder, they were just massive bullet sponges. They were boring and tedious.


So, no. Broken Steel vastly harmed Fallout 3.

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Here's hoping that there's no kind of "level cap increase" (although it'd be hard to do, the way the system seems to be set up) for Skyrim. Increasing the level cap for the "I gotta have MOAR LEVELS!" crowd is always a mistake. Why even bother trying to balance the power in a game, if you're just going to throw it all out with a cap increase?

All it boils down to for me is that first of all, I don't enjoy damage-sponge enemies with fights that last 5 minutes to kill one Goblin Warlord. That's why I'm not satisfied with the lame "difficulty slider" Bethesda provided for challenge-seeking gamers like me. I understand that difficulty should be adjustable. 50-slashes-to-kill enemies is not the answer, it takes more than that to provide a real challenge. While OB is still my favorite RPG of all-time because of its sheer amount of content, I felt the entire experience was sorely lacking after I hit Level 20 or so. I wanted to do all the guilds, & SI & KOTN all on the same character, but I kept wanting to restart the game before I ever did so it would become challenging again. Don't get me wrong, Levels 1-15 of OB are the best fun I've EVER had in an RPG. I am not trying to brag, but I've made 2 battlemages on Oblivion (a Breton & an Argonian) and both of them got to the point around level 20 where I could walk into the Imperial city Palace District where the guards with the nice white & gold armor are, slap one of them in the face, then when they all start attacking me, I'll put the controller down and walk out of the room, take 5 minutes to make a sandwich, come back, and my health is still not even halfway down.

Anybody who is halfway decent at building an RPG character who has played OB as a battlemage knows that I am not BS'ing. This is on Default difficulty, Level 20 character with good gear, with a good number of points in Endurance. I don't care what excuses they may have about an open world, character diversity, or whatever, something is VERY WRONG with that. My brother is capable of doing similar things on Morrowind (I never played it, OB was my first TES game), but not as a FREAKING LEVEL 20. Now, they've basically come flat-out and said that Skyrim will be easier than OB. In my opinion, NV was the easiest Bethesda game yet, even on hardcoe mode. I'm starting to see a trend here. Oh, and they also admitted that it will take roughly the same amount of time to get to Level 50 in Skyrim as it did to reach the max Level of 30 in Fallout 3. That's not good either. Once again, thank God for mods. Modders, you're all going to have A LOT of work to do come November.

And to the guy on the last page who mentioned Wizards & Warriors, now that was a good old controller-thrown-through-the-TV type of challenge! :brokencomputer:
Ahh, those were the days. When it actually meant something if you had the skill to beat a game. Batman on the NES, anyone?

yes I think so. It had much better difficulty in enemies, level scaling, and balance. (lack of godmode skills like the 2 BSG games before it)

See that's what I mean, "godmode skills" is a good way of putting it. It's so easy it's like you're using cheats when you're playing legit...

lol to the 5 who voted they like OB's system better, they obviously didn't play fallout at all.

As I have said many times, when level scaling isn't noticed, then it is a good thing, like in Fo3.

I kinda get why people attention [censored] on public forums... but attention whoring your possibly made up Oblivion builds ? And I'm not sure what "NV" stands for, given that you can't possibly mean New Vegas.. the New Vegas with the DT and the cazadores and the steroided deathclaws and the "Monster of the East" and the dying a lot..

But to contribute, I guess I'm unsure about difficulty. Kiralyn was surely right when she/he mentioned the Broken Steel "bullet sponges".. but how do you make a game more difficult for a god, if not by pumping up the HP and the weaponry ? And by "making it more difficult", are we really meaning "making it more tedious" ? I tend to agree that once your char hits a certain level, there really is no challenge no more, and adding "super bosses" just encourages players to stealth/warp/console their way around them so they can continue on their way. The number of times I've crested a hill in FO3, seen a couple of Overlords, and just let out a big Kif-like "sigh" and turned 180 back the way I came..

you need to hav an "other" option. Both were crap levelling systems. Use morrowinds or nehrims, where you can go to high lvl areas and actually die. You dont live long against kagoutiis in morrind at lvl 1, but if it was oblivion or fallout, the kagoutiis wouldnt spawn to lvl 6 and instead, you would see a mole rat or a roach or a deer lol. Both were too easy too. OOO and wanderers helped, but only a bit. I need a challenge, and no, I dont want my weapon just to do 1/6th the damage like tes4, I want more enemies, smarter enemies and enemies carrying better weapons that actually kill you. Up the damage from both parties maybe, so in 4 hits your dead, but so is the enemy.It was good like that in wonderers fallout where every1 dies quickly due to absurd weapon danage, often in the 1000s.

@ Vicho, first of all, I even said I'm not trying to brag, it's a legimate concern. And yes, I was talking about New Vegas. It was very easy for me. Considering that by Level 5, wearing the NCR Salvaged Power Armor, I could kill everybody in the entire Hoover Dam (inside and out) with a Sniper Rifle maybe 2-3 Stimpaks in about 10 minutes or less, that is easy. You'd be amazed what a high Sneak skill can do if you use it right. Don't get me started on having the Pyromaniac Perk and wielding the Anti-Material Rifle w/ Incendiary Rounds. 2-shotting Legate Lanius? YES. Clearing out the Cazador's Nest with nothing but NCR Power Armor, 2 Stimpaks, and a Displacer Glove? Not a problem. I have A HIGH ENDURANCE STAT. Do I need to prove it on YouTube? I still have the save.

And yes, they are all completely legit saves, I never put mods or console commands in until I have done at least 2-3 legit playthroughs. I wouldn't be on here complaining about the difficulty level if I was going to cheat all the time. I can tell you in one sentence how to make a completely godlike character on OB. Pick major skills Blade, Alteration, Restoration, & Heavy Armor, wear only Heavy Armor until at least Level 15 so you will get a lot of extra Endurance points when you level up. A high Endurance early in the game is all you really need, with decent Willpower so you can use Heal and buff spells often.

Even better, just train your Illusion skill up real quick, get access to the Spellmaking/Enchanting Altars, and make a spell that gives you a "Chameleon 100%" enchantment. Then, enchant a ring or something with any amount of Chameleon, even as little as 1%. Equip the ring, cast the spell, as long as the spell stays active, you are completely invisible AND invincible. That's only one of many, many such spells in the game. I don't even consider it an "exploit", technically it's a totally legit "god mode" spell. :rofl:

@ Arfien, that is exactly what I'm trying to say. High-Risk, High-Reward, not a 5-minute damage soak. I would really enjoy the game a lot more if I COULD actually die from something like, say, 5 bandits ambushing me. Plus, if my character is as absurdly resistant to damage as he was in Oblivion, it won't matter if they give the enemies 1,000,000 HP, my characters simply CANNOT DIE. Like you said, "I want more enemies, smarter enemies and enemies carrying better weapons that actually kill you."

I want the default difficulty to be a challenge, if it's too hard, the noobs complaining are the ones who can put it on Very Easy. Let the default difficulty be for people who actually pay attention when building the character they are going to spend 100+ hours playing as. But don't punish me for having skill and wanting to be challenged, and when I go on Very Hard mode, you're making me fight Ogres and Goblin Warlords that take 5 minutes each to kill even with extremely potent weapons/spells. Which is a boring 5 minutes, since they can't hurt me either. Let me try not to get myself started again on the overpowered spells you can make, i.e. 103% Chameleon God Mode.

the way i see it, in skyrim if you're level let's say...10 and wander around into what would be considered a hard dungeon, it's possible you'll run into level 30 enemies.
it depends on the dungeon/area itself.


taking that same dungeon as an example, what if our character was at level 40, would enemies scale to unfairly outmatch yours? no, basically the enemies have a minimum and maximum level at which you may encounter them, if you're lv40 and the maximum level for that dungeon was also 40, the enemies would be at level 40.


this allows for optional dungeons that are supposed to be very hard by making sure the min/max level of the enemies is the same value. imagine finding a dungeon where all enemies were all fixed at level 50 or higher.

Yeh, no.. its not so much about "How op is my build ? " in late level FO3 as it is about "not another Albino Radscorp".. and the comparisons keep being made between FO3 and Skyrim.. by Tod himself.. so I'm trying hard, real hard, not to be thinking my little level 40 Khajit will one day crest a hill just outside Solitude and, sighing to herself, mutter wearily ".. not another dragon.."

Personally, I've never had a character be that indestructable. All my characters have Restoration as a commonly used skill, because it takes a constant stream of healing spells to keep up with the "spillover" damage that pounds through a shield block while fighting even a single enemy (and especially people with two-handers, trolls, and ogres).

Of course, this is on PC with Francesco's scaling mod. But I don't install the "weapon and armor rebalance" module. Oh, and this is with "controlled leveling", not using Major skills, always having three +5 stat bonuses every level, etc.

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Edit: of course, the big problem with this thread is the OP's linking "difficulty" with "level scaling". And while they're related, they're not the same thing.

Level Scaling isn't completely bad but Oblivion went majorly overboard hence why people complained "It's taking me 5 minutes just to kill a Goblin Warlord or a Lich".

Fallout 3 was ok I like the difficulty that Fallout 3 had. You could go every where but you had to be careful or else you would get killed. Although Fallout 3's difficulty got ruined by Broken Steel although I blame the flawed leveling system which was good until broken steel came out. Skyrim I can't really say we will have to wait and see.

They never said the difficulty would be the same as in Fallout 3, right? Just that Skyrim will utilize the same scaling system. This is a good thing - you'll always see the same types of enemies at the same locations, and the world will feel very natural. If you want a bigger challenge, head to a new area. And Todd himself said he had to scale down the difficulty when he was trying to kill a dragon during the demo I think, of course I don't know what his level was but still, they're sure to make at least the dragons worthy opponents.

@ DarkBrotherhoodOfSteel

The question I have is why? Where is the fun in even playing that way? Sure by level 5 your walking around swatting any enemy away by hiding and sniping, or walking around with Chameleon. Talk about purposefully draining the fun out of a game. But then again, they are features of the game and perfectly legit, so it's a player's choice. I just don't get it. Seems like a waste of money. (As long as that player is not pirating the game but that's a different story. I'm not accusing anyone by the way just saying.)

Oblivion: "Every enemy is a higher level than you and has full Daedric/Glass armor somehow, but questing is easy as cake because the devs hold your hand everywhere you go."

Oblivion was good, it was fun, but man were their mistakes critical.