Yes, slide that difficulty slider (read: tediousness slider) all the way up.

In Fallout 3 -
Normal = casual
Easy = god mode
Hard = barely challenging

I don't want some weird slider, just a bunch of presets with a clear indication. Normal should be challenging, easy for casuals, and hard for hardcoe gamers.

So you wont make it harder but you want it to be harder...makes sense :tops:

the default difficulty is not for the hardcoe gamers, easy is for newcomers, default is for skilled and hard is for the elite.

if you want it to be harder just use the slider...as it was meant to be used for players such as yourself

I do not want Skyrim to be as hard as Demon Souls

The Difficulty Slider just adjusts the amount of damage you take and give (and the XPR points) . . . it doesn't change the difficulty of the entire game . . . just combat damage. The Difficulty Slider is just a cheap fix. Setting it on Hard just makes the game play less realistic, as the NPCs and Creatures become bullet sponges.

This is what I wrote on my Fallout 3 website, after completing the Main Quest for the first time:
"From the first time I played Fallout, the game felt extremely unbalanced. I tried really hard to give the default game a chance, so at first I only added mods that made graphic changes. But then I waltzed though the Main Quest only wearing Butch's leather jacket for protection and with just the Overseer's 10mm pistol to defend myself. This game was way too easy! It was obviously targeted at casual gamers, and because of this focus, the player character was given a huge advantage over the NPCs. Sure, you may have to struggle a bit when you first escape from the vault (for like the first 10 minutes), but it really doesn't take long to end up with an over-powered character, with an arsenal of over-powered weapons, and more ammo than you could ever possibly use. I was seriously bummed out, as Bethesda had once again released a RPG that was so 'dumbed-down,' that it was only a shadow of what I felt it should have been.

The Wasteland was supposed to be a very harsh, unforgiving place, where survival was difficult. A 19-year-old, who had grown up in the comfort and protection of Vault 101, and had like no combat experience should not be able to take on entire groups of Raiders, with hardly a scratch. When my character did get shot, it was nothing more than a little boo-boo, with a little "ouchy" and in no time at all she was all-better."

Then I went to work on my http://amito.freehostia.com/Fallout/FO-mods04.htm to make the game the way that I felt it should have been.

I pretty much had the same issues with Oblivion being way too easy. I'm hoping that Skyrim will actually be a challenging RPG . . . but I'm afraid that Bethesda is going to try to appeal to casual gamers again, by dumbing the game down, and relying on the Difficulty Slider to appease players who want more of a challenge.

It's not the 90's anymore friend,boss to me means "I call the shots take me out for a tactical advantage". "Hard" or "sudo-challenge" games like demon souls are just repetitive crap sacks that are just lame. It's like their offended that non hardcoe games might be able to play it or god forbid..... oo: reach the end!

Because you're apparently better than other players, and are not remotely the person who they're going to balance "normal" difficulty around? :shrug:


(I can't say about Oblivion, because I've never played it unmodded; but Fallout 3? Played that on Normal. Died a bunch of times. Still wary of Sentry Bots and anything with a rocket launcher. And Deathclaws. )

The Master Ninja setting of Ninja Gaiden Black (3rd person action/fighting/adventure game, for those who are unfamiliar) introduced entirely new enemies to the game, changed original enemies to significantly harder versions, made enemies smarter, made items in the shops cost a lot more (at least 3 or 4 times more), and limited the number of healing items you could have. And also made your health bar practically negligible, as well as beefing up enemy health. When in lower difficulties you could do a lot with the parry/counter feature, enemies now had a counter counterattack, and used it a lot, forcing you to find a new way to fight. All of these things made it more challenging.

The Master Ninja setting on Ninja Gaiden Black. Difficult is the Master Ninja setting on Ninja Gaiden 2. It made harder versions of old enemies, etc etc, all the same things they did in Ninja Gaiden Black. But the enemies, along with their health increases, mostly just hung back and pelted you with exploding shuriken. Very often there are a dozen or more enemies attacking you at once, evading almost everything you do, stabbing you in the back, and all the while throwing those #@$^ing exploding shuriken at you. You almost literally cannot even move or attack from how often you get blown around. And the game has a limb dismemberment system, but also a system where an enemy without a limb can perform a suicide attack on you. So the minute you do hit an enemy, he just jumps on top of you and, guess what, blows himself and you up with an exploding shuriken. At one point late in the game, you find yourself on a staircase, more or less an enemy/projectile funnel, with I @#$% you not 100 or more enemies charging down at you, chucking away. Beating the game on Master Ninja requires taking advantage of things the community have called "i-frames." That is, in certain attack animations, there are a few frames in which the programming doesn't allow for your character to be hit. That's frames. Winning requires attacking so that these frames (maybe 1 or 2 in an animation, and not in every attack, and which were not intentionally added by the developers) line up perfectly with when a projectile or explosion would hit you. You needed impeccable exploitation of a programming quirk to beat the game. It's that absurd. That made the game more difficult, which is not the same as challenging.

The difficulty slider in Oblivion is appropriately named. The game does get harder when you bump it up, and up to a point the extra damage dealt/taken multiplier does make the game more challenging by counteracting the default overpowered sense of your character. But at some point it crosses a line and just makes things more difficult. Personally, and I have no suggestions or ideas about this, I would prefer a system that made the game more challenging rather than solely more difficult. Or an appropriate mix of both. From what we know so far, default vanilla Skyrim is taking a step in the right direction. From the talk of increased tactical emphasis in combat, it sounds like they have made the core combat mechanics less forgiving. They're removing the hit and run tactic from Oblivion, changing how blocking and spellcasting work, and in their own words making combat feel more "personal." That, along with dragons which are described as being intelligent and not easy at all. I find all of these to be signs that the nature of the game is going to be more difficult than in the past.

Maybe the difficulty slider could make gold drops lower, and raise the cost of things in the game by a certain amount? Maybe it could give some enemies a new attack that hits harder? Or make more of them diseased, and the diseases more contagious? There are a lot of options with a game as open and with as many mechanics as Skyrim, and I hope that the developers strike a good balance between challenge and difficulty. I trust them. And in the meantime, we can rename the difficulty slider the hardness slider. Your mom gave me a hardness slider. No, that would be inappropriate. :whistling:

You said you found no challenge in DEFAULT difficulty. Play harder difficulty then, don't go trolling threads on the skyrim forums.

I understand where the OP is coming from,he's right,it should be more difficult by default. Just turning the difficulty up in oblivion or fallout just made HP sponges. That's ok for some mobs,but not all. You get used to a game after a while,even when you push the difficulty up,thats why it should be harder by default,i completely agree with the guy. It's easier to make the game easy ,than it is harder,because we all find exploits,or great gear,or just get better at controlling our characters etc. AI should be more intelligent in skyrim,we have to block carefully now too. So bethesda themselves must think the difficulty must need pushing up a notch as default.


Anyway,i agree with the OP.

Bethesda should make the game with a difficulty slider. That should be enough for those who are not trying to be selfish and inconsiderate

I'm thinking, from the stuff you wrote here, that it's not because they target "Normal" difficulty at the low end, but that you are near the extreme high end of game players.


(I consider myself an "average" gamer - I've been playing computer & other games for a long time. I'm no master - I don't do well at high difficulties and generally don't try for the super "take no damage" achievements, but I think I'm "not bad". Depends on the genre, of course. And I personally found some challenges at Normal difficulty. And certainly wouldn't feel comfortable trying FO3 with just light armor and a pistol.)

I *do* agree that a more interesting & robust difficulty system (something beyond "you take more damage, they take less damage") would be nice, if only to quiet down the vocal "top 2%" forum dwellers who constantly complain about games being too easy, leading to travesties like the enemies in Broken Steel (& later DLCs).

Yep, I agree with the OP too.

Have you guys who suggest the slider actually tried it? It's [censored]. As in, Forrest Gump on drugs [censored].
They should get rid of the difficulty slider and add difficulty settings, or at least change the way the slider works.

edit: wow, I can't type [censored]? What the hell?

bypassing the autocensor is a bad idea, m'kay

Uh, actually I died a lot in Oblivion.

I never figured out how this damn combat system of it actually works.

After a while I mentioned that just pressing buttons wildly would greatly improve my battle prowess.

What happend a lot was that I fought two mobs of the same kind and one went down easy without so much as a scratch on me, while the other only died with me hanging to the last hitpoint. Guh.

I found that highly frustrating, especially since I couldnt figure out why this happend or what I was supposed to do.

I also laughed my behind off when I found out that I could simply dodge spells. Now how stupid is that ?

Healing potions, I always tend to accumulate those without end.

You have just lost all credibilty. Don't say anything if you can't turn up the difficulty leve, because if they made Skyrim Harder that is all they would be doing, putting up the difficulty level up.

So what is your point then? If difficulty level 0 is no good for you why would Bethesda make Skyrim Difficulty 25 or 50 if you can't even do it yourself?

You are making no sense now so how can Bethesda make Skyrim harder if you can't do it yourself? :banghead:

If anything, I want everyone to have low health. The battles in Oblivion lasted way too long at higher levels.

The difference between you and the orignal poster is you tired to make the game harder for yourself and still found it easier, while the OP can't be bothered and is still complaining. He gave no excuses as to why the game is easy, you have. He could have said the game isn't really harder on level 100.

For me, I found Oblivion too easy, and in Fallout 3, I hate bullet sponges, Bullet sponges doesn't make the game harder, just more monotoneous.

Go here, do that, and instead of hitting someone 10 time, now you hit them 20 times, might make it a bit harder, but not what alot of people are looking for.

Thing is is this what the OP means? No because he never experianced the higher difficulty levels. Then again I put up the difficulty in Oblivon and found it too hard so put it back to normal. So it does work a bit. It worked in Oblivon but not in Fallout 3. Fallout 3 worked out to be bullet sponges not fun at all.

Good bye, role playing games. It was nice to have known you.

There were many things in both Oblivion and FO3 that I feel were done to make the games easier than they were originally intended (there's a LOT of stuff in FO3 that was not used in the released game . . . the values were often set in a way the nullified the commands). I understand that marketing demands mean that games like Skyrim have to have a LOT of sales to be successful . . . I just wish that they made the game more challenging and then allowed players who didn't want this degree of challenge to disable some features.

I'm NOT an "extreme high end gamer." I'm not a power gamer. Morrowind was my first RPG. I loved Morrowind, but I was very disappointed in Oblivion, because a LOT of the things that I loved about MW had been "dumbed down."

And you're very wrong about the percentage of gamers who feel that these games (OB and FO3) are too easy. Some of the most popular mods for OB is OOO, and for FO3: MMM and FWE . . . mainly because they all make the game harder. And my FO3 Realism Tweaks have had over 14,000 downloads (and my NV Tweaks have already been downloaded nearly as much). Apparently there are a LOT of gamers who want a more challenging game than what was released.

When I played Oblivion/Nehrim I changed the melee damage variable to be 6 times the default. I think that means that on the hardest setting I hit opponents for 100% and they hit me for 3600%? Either way it was fun because it made all the opponents die in a few swings and I died in a few swings.

You should try that. The difficulty slider is meant to adjust the game's difficulty to suit you and your situation, there default isn't some 'intended gameplay' like you suggest.

I didn't work like that to me. The balance isn't right,there is more in favour to making the game easy in my opinion. It's ok saying turn the slider up,but it's just more HP rather than more mobs or more intelligent AI. The game really does need to be harder by default,and i don't want to come across as selfish when saying that. There are alot more ways to make the game easier than harder in my opinion. Whether,we ourselves get better with the controller,sus out enemy tactics,find exploits ( we always do ) and many more. It just seems more fitting to easier options than it does harder one's. I'm not saying ridiclously hard by default,but it sure needs to harder. If you put the bar up,it should do more than add HP.If possible it should make enemies more intelligent, or instead of one giant say....There is now 2-3 of them. There could be better ways than just HP.

The difficulty sliders in Oblivion and Fallout 3 svcked ass, it was okay though in New Vegas.

I'd like the difficulty slider to rather ramp up the amount of damage enemies do instead of the damage they can take. It's not that cool when
you have to empty 3 magazines in the head of a raider before he dies, what is cool though is when you kill two people in a stand-off knowing that if
you had reacted a little slower or your aim would have been a little off they'd probably have blown you to smithereens. And before anyone
explains how endurance would be rendered useless and that this is an RPG and I should go play Call of Duty or whatever: no endurance wouldn't be
useless, statistics would still be there. You'd still get more hp from endurance and thus be able to take more bullets, but maybe not three rockets in the face.

Bethesda has never really been that good at handling difficulty in their games.

hardcoe mode please!

Fair enough.

Different opinions are different. :shrug:


(I took a peek at your mod. Lots and lots of features, I'm sure it took a great deal of dedication. Looks quite well done Of course, it looks like it'd make the game amazingly unpleasant for me... but that's what optional mods are for. About the only "more difficulty" thing I've used in FO3 is FOOK2, and that was mostly to try the different guns & spawns. The increased deadliness of things..... lets just say I do alot more reloading..... I did try OOO once for Oblivion - but I did that mostly for the "different monsters wandering the map" and level scaling tweaks rather than any difficulty increase. I ended up going back to Francesco's scaling mod.)



on numbers - it may be a perception thing. I don't consider the forum-using population to be representative of a game's user base - the people who care enough to hit the forums are already self-selected to be the more active/interested/"fanatical"/whatever members of the userbase. So just because something is vocally popular on a forum, doesn't necessarily tell me that it'd be widely popular with the "average" player. 14000 download also seems "niche" to me (very good niche, of course) But that's compared to some of the "biggies" on the Nexus top lists - FOMM (865k), MMM (425k), Type 3 body (1.2M)....... the numbers for all of those get a bit different if you look at unique downloads, of course. :shrug:


---------

YES, I'm all in favor of an improved difficulty system for Skyrim - Oblivion's and Fallout 3's weren't adequate. People who want a harder game deserve good options for it. But I don't think that the base "Normal" difficulty had any issues.

If you choose not to turn the difficulty up that is your problem.