When you cast 100 spells that cost 1 spellpoint each, you should earn little less "XP points" than when casting one 100 point spell. Ability to fail spells should return, little tweaked maybe.

Hitting rats will no longer give you any weapon "XP" after a certain time. Maybe the first ten rats. You're beating some damn rodents, how do you become a weapon master like that?

Duealing against someone far better than you, no matter if losing or winning, should be a good lesson to you.

Bunny hopping won't give you any "XP". Give lots of "XP" per jump, but only from few jumps per day? (IRL day)

Make all skills have daily/hourly limits?



This comes from someone who uses 5x slower leveling mod for TES4, and keeps the Experience Dagger in exact middle or higher in TES2. http://tinyurl.com/37p2pk5

I won't discuss Magic, because that has quantitative measures of difficulty (some spells use more magicka, do more damage) whereas weapons are fairly static.

And while I agree that "you cannot master Blade by chopping onions" very few people will be killing rats to get to level 100, the nature of the grind actually makes that "harder" to do because it's boring.

The system already has it in place so that let's say, to go from level 1 to level 2, you need to hit an enemy 10 times. Now, to go from level 2 to 3, you need to hit an enemy 20 times. Now, this has a twofold effect. At first, it is hard to level because you skill is so low that you rarely connect hits. At a mid level, you level quickly because you are hitting often, but still making skill gains in small increments. At the highest levels, you are once again slow to gain more skill because although you are accurate with your attacks, it takes many successful attacks per skill gain.

So even though there's no measurable difference between an attack at level 1 against a rat and an attack at level 25 against a troll and an attack at level 75 against a frost giant, you still make different skill gains each time. Yes, you could sit there killing rat at level 25 and eventually get to 75, but few people will do that because it will take so long. By design, as soon as you are skillfull enough to kill harder enemies without dying, you will. And thus increase your skill further.

I like the "drain skill" -x points -> trainer trains skill for 1gc trick.

I'm not sure about this. I have to ask: why? You always have the ability to role-play. If you don't want to gain experience by making low-level potions, then don't. Problem solved. Just play your game the way you want to, and don't worry about what everyone else is doing.

Non-issue.

I fully agree. For each skill they should go through and decide what it is that prevents that skill from being performed, and depending on the dificulty give proportional skill points.

Each hit of the sword is dependent on the opponents agility and block skill, so if they have higher agility then you get more skill points for it. They also need to bring back spell fails, so the harder the spell is to cast the more skill points you get.

I love this idea. Its too east to get pulled into the dark world of spamming low level spell casting to gain levels. But If a low level spell gave you 1 millionth of the skill points required for the next level you just wouldnt even bother.

I totally agree! I actually wrote a whole big long post on this subject but it fell a few pages back. To summarize it, the game should encourage you to experiment and not reward you for doing boring easy things.

Many skills are perishable if not continutally practiced. Marksmanship comes immediately to mind, and is a good anology to you low level spell casting idea. Drill drill drill with perfect practice on the foundations in order to learn proper advanced techniques. Firing at a wall won't improve skill, but it will maintain proficiency if done correctly. Should skills diminish through lack of use?

I did that by making a weak fire damage on self spell called "Indian Burn".

Man, your examples are hillarious, its tough to disagree with these :rofl:.

Why is there food involved?

Level scaling. Is that what you are asking for?

I agree, this should be looked into.

That ^ :thumbsup:

With that I assume you think it was a bad move to remove the previous exploits as well? Like throwing destruction spells into a wall to gain XP? Being a role playing game it should encourage role playing rather than encourage exploiting the system. Going for that multiplier, I choose to block some mudcrabs for a while, despite being high level and high block skill.

So I think it is an issue in that doing it just doesn't make sense.

I'm sorry, but this "it's your own choice" argument is getting old. The game seems to be scaled and built around easy power leveling. Unless you choose to do so, you'll end up with a very weak character during the mid levels. I don't mind practicing, but I do mind freebies. Throw expensive spells at your current level if you want to actually advance. Prepare to use a lot of potions or time. Suddenly power leveling isn't such an easy way out, although it's still possible if you're ready to make the trade.

This idea sounds incredibly tedious. No thanks.

I think they should.

I agree, though care must be taken not to make this sort of implementation a pain to play with. A slow regression in skills when they don't get used does make sense (Mastery of a skill takes constant practice in real life, too) but I'd much rather only lose a skill point every week or two than every day or two. If it's slow enough, the work to regain/maintain that skill level is a constant, but fun challenge for characters who have otherwise reached their supposed peak.

Oh please no. I don't want skills in Skyrim to end up being like Farmville or whatever. I don't play Farmville but my family members are always worried about their crops withering and such. Just no way. I want to play a game, not deal with worrying about my character degrading due to disuse.

Edit:
An option for people that want it wouldn't be bad though. I'm strongly in favor of a sub-menu that turns various things on and off, such as the need for food/drink, the extent of quest markers, fast travel, etc. This idea would fit nicely with that. So I change my opinion to "only if it's optional."

I was thinking along the lines of regression beginning at three months of in game time which would be 36hrs of play time and would decrease by 1 point every 2 weeks of in game time(5.6 play hrs) it remains neglected.

Absolutely not. Skills should diminish IN SPITE of use. At some point your efforts at raising a skill will be out paced by its degradation. I've long thought of this as a way to rid the arbitrary ceiling (100) in favor of a more organic ceiling. you can go over skill 100 but at what cost to the rest of your life. Also eliminates "Masters of all trades" without eliminating "Jacks of all trades". A Bosmer has higher archery than an Orsimer, rather, he should have an easier time learning it so his ceiling is naturally higher rather than just having a bonus at the start. ofc skills should not degrade so fast that its hard to get any high or so people feel compelled to spend time training instead of adventuring to keep them high. More like skills degrade at a max of 1 per month, but slower progress in advancing past skill 100 makes it almost impossible to get higher than ~120. If it bothers you, turn off degradation below lvl 75~85.

Also. I heard of a mod for Morrowind (since you could fail in Morrowind) that changed leveling from success based to fail based. You would only get XP for failing. Learn a lot earlier because you miss (even miss giant crabs) but learn less as you get higher since you fail less (doing the same action over and over isn't educational). I didn't get to play it so I don't know how it turned out. If any one knows what I'm talking about, pls tell me how it was.

And has any one considered the difference between learning knowledge and learning by doing? You read a book -> learn a new technique. Practice -> learn muscle memory. In both cases you gain XP but both are necessary to be a 'master' of anything. You can't become a martial artist just by reading, you can't learn all there is to know about alchemy just by doing it.

Also, STR is very useful to everyone, but INT is only useful to spell casters. Why not let INT affect learning rates so even a fighter can benefit from intelligence. maybe use INT for knowledge type learning and END (or WIL or...) for physical "learning".

As a tradesman I have to disagree there. I've spent most of my life roofing and after 25 years, i don't have to think about it anymore, my muscles are preprogrammed to perform the physical actions my trade requires. In most cases of acquiring skills you learn everything there is to know about the mechanics of the skill very early on and mastery only comes after not having to think about those mechanics before you perform them. They have become second nature.

Yuck, no. Specifically the last bit. It's a spell. If I cast it, it should count. Perhaps MORE experience for higher level spells, and MORE experience casting during combat, but think about it. I can cast "detect life" all day long. I can even craft a detect life spell that lasts 1 sec. for 5 feet (if you follow me) and cast that over and over and over until I level. I got insanely good at the detect life area of magic, while still horrible at every other form of magic. Because I cast it a LOT. I found it very useful. But if I want to get better at destruction, I have to hurt something? silly. Just silly. I should be able to burn down a forest and get "experience" for it. Or a house. I wound up making a destruction spell with myself as the target for 1 HP just so that I could get better at Destruction magic. It was boring. Grinding is called grinding at least partly because it's NOT fun. But I did it because I wanted to use a spell I'd gotten as a part of the magic guild quest in Oblivion. I will agree that the method is silly in general, but "practice makes perfect" and the idea that there must be a target to me is silly. But again, more experience should be granted for higher level spells and for spells during combat.
If I choose to cast at the water though, I should get experience for it. Also, I think that if you spammed the lowest level restoration spell, you should get some experience. However, perhaps rather than getting to spend that, you just start casting lower level spells of that type more quickly.

Sounds like you want to just be able to tape down the "cast spell" button and leave the game running overnight. You could just get the game for PC and press the magical tilde key and type in "player.advskill restoration 100". Saves time.

I think a bigger problem than the "learn by doing" exploits is the absence of learning by doing in a couple of cases. Meaning, you don't have to learn these cases at all in order to be a master at them. I'm referring to speechcraft and lockpicking. Those minigames either need to go or need a massive overhaul.

My phrase "doing the same thing over and over again" was directed at the mod, not at real life. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I know exactly what you mean. Anyone that knows what a keyboard is should understand the concept of "muscles are pre-programmed" as you can't type (type not hunt and peck) without some sort of muscle memory. And I was talking about that kind of programming when I mentioned muscle memory and how it relates to real skill in the next paragraph. You cant read books all your life and then go build roofs like a master, even if you only read about roofing. Also, you cant build roofs if you don't know what a roof is or what its made of regardless of how well you can haul materials or swing a hammer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we are on the same page.

Don't do it? How's that for a fix?