This is something I haven't heard about much, so I thought I'd post. How hard exactly is skyrim, by this I mean not the difficulty slider, which just makes the enemies damage sponges, are they going to make gold actually hard to get, because the best immersion factor is usually in the beginning of the game when you are struggling to get some gold to survive, youll do any quest to get it, sort of like fallout 3 at the beginning. In oblivion you could just mow down most enemies, even at the beginning. That is part of the reason I despise the decision to eliminate weapon degradation, me coming off of fallout 3, it is a money sink, as well as being expensive, it is essential for you to survive, you need a weapon. There isn't even a reason for it, it doesn't make sense. Do any of you know about anything relating to this in skyrim?

I don't have a source, but I remember reading somewhere that Skyrim will have a difficulty setting of Very easy, easy, normal, hard, very hard. The level scaling will also be similar to Fallout 3, but I hardly doubt there will be any struggle to survive outside of combat, duel to beíng able to heal yourself pretty much everywhere and even without doing it, like in oblivion. (restoration spells/waiting/sleeping etc). Fallout 3 had a great experience the first time I played it, the struggle to survive and find bullets often made me run low on caps. I actually had to steal to be able to heal myself back to combat shape! That's something oblivion and Skyrim won't have.

They should just make the enemies harder and remove weapon degradation, as I think they are doing. Also, I believe those dumb difficulty sliders are gone in place of "Easy, Normal, Hard, etc." modes. Put it on a harder difficulty than normal, and enjoy a tough start!

I'm greatly interested in how difficulty settings work in skyrim. I am hoping its like fallout 3 where i can start on the hardest difficulty setting from the beginning.

I heard a rumor that the slider is not used and that enemies wont be damage sponges but i don't know. Cant find any info on it myself.

I like it in games when my character starts out weaker and its more of a challenge just to kill things. Although i know some people like to be stronger than everything else and feel special which is what skyrim seems to be geared towards. I am hoping the difficulty settings will fix this for me but if not then oh well? The slider in oblivion didn't really fix it for me, fighting damage sponges is not fun.

It's not going to be the same thing, at all. Difficulty setting at very hard will only pose a threat to you in combat. Outside it, you'll have infinite HP and weapons don't even need repairing. The real survival intensity that fallout 3 gave was incredible, I sure hope fallout 4 will be similar!

Yeah, Im currently playing it right now, I started like 3 days ago and its superb

That's just proof the TES games revolve around combat. Not harder puzzles or skill checks just combat mechanics lightly brewed with ARPG stats

Sammu posted the difficulty settings are novice, apprentice, adept, and master I believe. All of the demos were on the lowest setting, so difficulty and game balance will depend upon the player.

those were spell/skill levels not difficulty levels.

It depends what what factors the difficulty changes. But I know that every ES game so far has the problem that your just swimming in gold at the end, so you have no real drive to do any quests, except to see how they will play out

Sammu also posted despite the Demo on Easy, alot of people still got killed when fighting something stronger than them. Though normal bandits were easily duel flamed

That wasn't he case in morrowind. Enchants would cost hundreds of thousands of gold and training would cost a lot of gold too the higher you went.gold was hard to get in that game unless you abused the scamp / mudcrab, but even then you would have a difficult time saveing money until you had the best possible gear / max skills.

I like the idea of having a very rough beginning - being too weak to take on dragons, being too poor to afford anything more than very basic equipment, finding certain parts of the gameworld extremely dangerous to explore, etc. It makes the game so much more rewarding when you kill your first dragon, or when you're finally able to afford that sword you've been saving up for, or when you're eventually strong enough to stomp through the gameworld with confidence.