In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End Noobs and West End Pros
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End Noobs and West End Pros
West End Pros

erm, that makes the assumption that the goal of taking the new place would be worth it. Like I said, tactical or strategic value might come into play.

Not quite following you here.

Perhaps the bandits are based in the west, have their strong ones there, etc., and are sending out the weaker bandits to attack the weaker targets? Why waste strength on the weak? Keep your battled-tested and smart ones to the rear where they can train the new ones and plan to take over the world.

Math lesson - lets assume that there are 3 groups of bandits in the world, lets assume as you say that they are all based in the west.
The world: we already know that the land of skyrim has 5 glorious citys splitting all over skyrim, so there is no such thing as unprofitable east and profitable west.

Now for the math - 1 group of bandits is sending her weaker link to attack the weak east, why wasting strong troops on an easy target, as you said.
following action - "Oh no!" says the 2nd bandits group. "We wont let them take the east for themeselves! MOAR STRENGTH TO TEH EAST I SAY U MAGGOTS!" and so, the 2nd bandits group is sending their medium-strong bandits to take over the first group.
following action next - "I see" says the high ruler of the 3rd bandits group while brushing his long gray beard with his hand "Gather near and listen my honorable bandits. We are not going to let those weaklings take over. Send our best men, and bring the treasure to me." he waves them off with his hand, and so the 3rd bandits group is moving strong towards the east to take over.

And so on.

Edit: my math lesson became a bed-time story. Oh well

Math lesson - lets assume that there are 3 groups of bandits in the world, lets assume as you say that they are all based in the west.
The world: we already know that the land of skyrim has 5 glorious citys splitting all over skyrim, so there is no such thing as unprofitable east and profitable west.

Now for the math - 1 group of bandits is sending her weaker link to attack the weak east, why wasting strong troops on an easy target, as you said.
following action - "Oh no!" says the 2nd bandits group. "We wont let them take the east for themeselves! MOAR STRENGTH TO TEH EAST I SAY U MAGGOTS!" and so, the 2nd bandits group is sending their medium-strong bandits to take over the first group.
following action next - "I see" says the high ruler of the 3rd bandits group while brushing his long gray beard with his hand "Gather near and listen my honorable bandits. We are not going to let those weaklings take over. Send our best men, and bring the treasure to me." he waves them off with his hand, and so the 3rd bandits group is moving strong towards the east to take over.

And so on.
Edit: my math lesson became a bad-time story. Oh well

:)

Now you're doing what I'm doing! Just trying to come up with a scenario that debunks the other :foodndrink:

But wait! Group 2 sees Group 1 send its weaklings out to loot the weak to the east, so Group 2 ignores the east and goes for a power grab by sending its strongies to Group 1's stronghold knowing that: 1) Group 1's numbers are down, and 2) going for Group 2's stockpile of logistical supplies and stash of gold. Screw the east...the boon and big battle is still in the west! :toughninja:
Erm, then there's group 3....Well, they'll just let the other two tenderize each other then move in with they're own baddies after the first two have gone at for a while...popping into both of their rear strongholds :tropy:

Um, ya...what was the original topic? Personally, I like having a safe rear area, with room to develop my character. From tehre I want to move out into harsher conditions. A few sporadic tough butt-kickings in ther eto let me know I'm mortal is always welcome. :nod:

We can keep the story forever. look
Group 1 was faking! (TA DA DA DAMMM) they sent their weaklings to the east as a distraction, they knew greedy group 2 who is having a long-time crush over their base will try to take over! so they made their base into a fortress - which will stand against group 2's attacks even without group 1 weaklings!
At the moment group 2 is getting trapped as she sees she cant get through the fort of group 1. "Look at the play!" says with laugh the third's group ruler, as he sends his troops to take over the unfortified stronghold of group 2! group 2 lost their base at the west, fleeing to the east for starting a new life.
And so, the glorious battle of bandits is taking place all over skyrim! leaving death of the strong and the weak as well, everywhere.

See. we can keep it up its infinite and making the argue invalid.

But as we learned from here - storys evolve, and they never take place at one place only

:stare: Wait, you didn't...did you....did you just move a strong group 2 refugee to the east! Curse you!

Tis been fun, and that's the whole point as I see it. Folks just get too hung up on what SHOULD BE. It's a game, so have some fun

Cheers! :foodndrink:

*snip*

We all read and heard about the new dungeon system (6-10 level dungeon, 11-15 lvl dungeon, and so on).

I will start my point like this: In the game-world of TES I always like to see how the world seem to make sense, you can travel to anywhere from anywhere and explore, seeing how things are balanced and all-natural. The environment is just at its best, you will never feel or think the world is somewhat doing it wrong.

Now, what I fear of is this - we are starting as level 1 characters at some point in the world, lets assume this starting point is the "East side of skyrim". My biggest fear is this - they will make everything easy and low leveled near the starting point, everything we wil explore at this area will be leveled as 1-5. And we will feel very safe. Then, as we will get farther off the starting point, things will get annoyingly harder in progress. Very pokemon like. And lets say there is a small village at the farest edge from the starting point - What logic is there for villagers building a village surrounded by level 40 foes who each one of them can take the whole village alone? Or - lets say the village is heavily guarded by troops of soldiers because of the fact strong foes gather there - what is the sense for this foes to stay near the heavily guarded village when they can simply travel to the east and get no disturbance from the leveled 1-5 foes, and take over villages easily?
When I play ES i like to get my mind tuned into the world, feeling like a part of it. I will never be able to feel like that if such thing will happen, and my wonderful series of believable fantasy world game will end. Seriously, I just wont be able to role play it anymore.


thoughts?

So....what's the problem? It's called progression.

I'd rather have a more natural structure.
Such as the wilderness is fine for level 1-6.
Bandit caves 6-12.
Tombs, etc. 12-19.
Daedric ruins 20-27
Dragon temples/whatever 25-35
etc etc.

Not that specifically, but that kind of system. And some variation as well, of course. But that means the environment is believable, the player can visually recognize dangerous areas but can travel freely, and certain difficult areas are blocked off. Though I wouldn't mind some specific areas being particularly dangerous (far north, some secluded/mountainous areas, etc).

The new system locks the level of the dungeon to your level when you enter it. So if you decide to go all the way to the other side of the map you'll experience the same difficulty. Beyond that it depends on the type of opponents in the dungeon. Bandits, for example, will have a very low level cap and after a while every bandit den will be a walk in the park. So no, there will be no "East/West" effect that you fear. More like "Whoah! This is a dungeon with opponent X! Better back down and come back later."

In the game-world of TES I always like to see how the world seem to make sense, you can travel to anywhere from anywhere and explore [...]

@OP, it wouldn't be just a straight line of porgression. Firstly, you'd have the areas further from roads and major settlements with more powerful enemies than in more civilised and traversed areas. Secondly,you'dhave different level dungeons and camps probably based on a similar idea. It's not "West is easy, East is hard". It would be more like a contour mapof difficulty. At least that is what I expect. You will probably also have visual indicators around dungeons to give some suggestion of the difficulty of monsters inside. Like you see a cave with spider webs outside, avoid it because of giant spiders. See a cave yith goblin stuff, it willprobably be filled withgenericgoblins, so not as much of a risk.

I honestly think there is some confusion in this thread, though in all fairness I was reading through it fairly quickly. The OP stated he would be disappointed if the level progression varied from EAST to WEST (and only east to west, no variation. Far east is always easy, far west always hard) because it is unrealistic. Then certain people (through misconceptions i'm certain) said that they would call it very realistic because The farther from civilization you get, the more difficult things become. Now, maybe I am mistaken and everyone understands perfectly, but I wanted to point out that it seems like the arguments aren't meshing. As for MY opinion,

I think that a progression of levels strictly based on how far east or west (or north or south for that matter) would be ludicrous and truly upsetting. The spread of difficulty should be the distance from civilization in general, not distance from the starting town/city/whathaveyou.