I would love if the realism of "single sword stroke" damage carried over to the opponents as well. When that bandit can take 10 arrows from me, but only has to hit me once... well, it ruins the thrill of realism for me a bit. :confused:

Continue down that path you have now and the game wont be challenging on Master.
I had a character I rerolled.
An Orc warrior at lvl 35, with legendary dragon armor, two legendary enchanted daedric swords etc.

When a bear or such animals attack me from the back. I dont know. Cause my HP bar dont move, because the armor is too much.
When I swing at him, I dont see him cause before my animation is done the sad panda is dead.

Master is difficult at your level, but its not that its too easy later on. Its very very very hard. Its just that if you keep going down the road of Enchanting, Smithing together with some alchemy, and creating weapons and armor of the sort, together with the strong meelee skills. This game have no challenges in combat, at all. Even dragons is 2 shotted.

I have with my 2nd character (I made others but not counting below lvl 20 chars), that is a lvl 36 archer. I have 0 enchants, 0 alchemy and a few points in smithing.
The game is hard. Im often 1 shotted on Adept despite my 200 hp, on Expert I will be killed fast. I have not even tried master with him cause I cant. Cause I dont have enchant and high smithing.

That the game is challenging, is what I like the most. Im glad you have a challenging time now OP, but if you continue as you do, you wont have.
Master is extremly extremly hard if you dont use secondary skills.
You will be 1 shotted by just about anything.

I agree that there are too many people complaining about both sides of the coin, but iI dont offer any respect or sympathy for those that complains that Master is too easy. Thats only due to how you made your character.
Adept is perfectly balanced and very hard if you have no secondary professions. Its where you will play most of your time as a melee or physical damage user.

The ONLY class that can play on master without smithing, enchanting or alchemy is mages, even pure destruction mages. But around lvl 30+ it starts to be hard.
Then again, they complained so much they made a Mod for that, so its not hard anymore. Cause mages want Master to be the new easy, or they believe they are gimped.
Destruction is completely over the board with damage up until 25+, where it balances out. But I dont mind.

I played a mage too but its not my cup of tea. its a class where you must have enchanting however or you will run dry.

How can you say this? Its utter nonsense.
You are playing on Master as an archer and what you are saying is, you want to be able to one shoot them, on master.
Why dont you play Adept instead if you have a problem with having to shoot 10 arrows on enemies.
You wont even 1 shoot enemies on Adept even with sneak attack unless you have dark brother hood gown.
You do kill enemies in a few arrows, some in 1 though, on Adept.

Stop complaining that the game is too hard on Master lol:-) Its your choice to be there.

Couldn't agree more.

I think of it this way. Most of the difficult fights break down to you and maybe a cohort going up against 3-4 dudes. I just finished (Diplomatic Immunity) and it felt, to me, the way such fights would really play out IRL...the lone guy loses. On the other hand, I found myself in some pretty epic combats. Running down hallways narrowly dodging lightning bolts, getting healing potions off at the last second. Using every trick in the bag i.e. scrolls, poisons, buffs, ambushes, etc. to take out my opponents. By the end of the quest I felt like John McClain shouting "yippie ki yay," as I fled.

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with master difficulty. If you can't handle it then you can always click the arrow to the left.

it does not.
It depends on skill set only. And it only depends if you have enchanting, smithing and alchemy or not.

Skyrim without any enchants, smithing or alchemy is very tough on Adept.

People that have not tried a real go through dont know.

Try going a 2h Nord in light armor on Adept without enchanting and smithing and come back here and say its easy:-)

Again, the only class that have it easy for the first 30 levels on Master is mages. With or without enchanting and smithing.

Using Enchanting and smithing takes away the complete game experience. Its all about how fast you can kill this or that.

Using Muffled as a stealther is the same as a melee warrior using smithing+enchanting. Its that powerful. So stay clear of that too unless you really want to stay undedected and just kill the enemies one by one by one.

I guess you missed my first post where I mentioned ignoring smithing/enchanting until level 46 on Master.

It was not easy, but it was not too hard (obviously as I got to level 46). This is sword/shield in light armor and blocking and manually dodging things a lot. Skillset alone doesn't make you know when to block and interrupt a power attack, that's playstyle. Without that you would be one shot and/or worn down from blocking fatigue and killed.

And if you're finding Adept too hard I really don't know what to say. I will say that the problem isn't the game at that point, it's you.

I don't think the game is too hard or too easy, I just think that balance is all over the place. One dungeon is level scaled; the next dungeon is half level scaled half too easy with 2 mobs that are impossible to beat at your level; this quest you received at level 5 sends you off to try to kill a level 20 hagraven; this quest you received at level 20 has you killing level 1-4 bandits. It's a mess.

Once you've played through a couple times and have actually learned which quests to do and which to save it's not bad, but when you first start it's not unlikely that you'll be haphazardly sent on 4 or 5 quests in a row that you're just not ready for. Since the game doesn't let you check the level of what you're fighting you just have no way of knowing as well. Some tavern NPC will send you off to fight a giant at level 2 and you'll spend the next 3 hours wondering why you can't scratch him and keep getting 1-shotted.

I think one of the main things on master difficulty is play-style though. Stealth characters who never get hit never fully appreciate how much damage NPC's put out on master difficulty. Having seen my sword/shield warrior 1-shotted through his shield by something 3 levels weaker than him prevents me from being able to call this game easy.

Don't think so. How can players get richer if they have to fight things that are higher level and take a chance on getting stomped? Slower leveling means that you'll be fighting things more around your level. Going into areas where creatures are higher level becomes dangerous. The game won't get easier because it will take you longer to get to level 20 or higher..

Money is free flowing in the game because things are so easy to kill. Smithing is easy to level. Power levelers gather enough iron to grind out daggers for leveling. They can do that because there really aren't any super dangerous areas in Skyrim right now. By slowing the leveling Skyrim becomes more dangerous and power leveling skills such as smithing or enchanting isn't as profitable. Grinding out 100 daggers per level is not as easy as grinding out 10, 15 or 20. By slowing the skill leveling the game becomes more challenging even on the lower difficulty levels.

Adding an extra difficulty level or changing creature stats isn't going to work as long as players can level up fast. Slow the leveling and most of the problems go away. Master difficulty should not be as easy as some claim it to be. Slower leveling will solve that problem.

IMO if you choose to play on master difficulty then you should know what you are doing and accept that there will be challenges that you will be tested in order to overcome.

Realistically if there is somebody complaining in regards to master difficulty, that person's brain is not functioning correctly.

It's all about choices. I play at adept as a dualcasting destro mage. I am only level 12, but still, I get my rear end handed to me at times, and at times I seem unstoppable. The difference is the mob I'm fighting. While I'm ok against regular humanoids, I have problems against named/dungeon bosses/bandit chiefs. I think the game is fairly balanced, but based on what and how you play, you can either have more of a challenge fighting enemies, or less of a challenge. Freedom of choice is here, it's just people are sometimes too narrow minded to see it.

I play on Master difficulty with a fairly twinked out build, and have found that one of two things always happens:

1.) I kill my opponents very, very quickly.

2.) My opponents kill me very, very quickly.


Unsurprisingly, when you spend all your resources on making a character able to dish out tons of damage with a single strike, you inevitably turn yourself into a glass cannon.

It should be noted that when I do get killed very quickly, it's always by a powerful caster type. It also should be noted that the only magic resistance that I currently have is 25% from the Lord Stone. I'm going to try switching out an enchantment on my armor soon to give me more, but I don't think that it will make all that much of a difference.

I find master to be a bit too easy, and I think master should be the normal level. To me, everything is well balanced out. It forces me to withdraw and rethink my strategies, especially on the lower levels where much simply isn't possible to do. I'm glad I started out on master, and I'm glad my first character got seriously owned because of mismanagement on my part.

Btw I play with smithing as only major crafting skill, with sneak, archery, heavy armor (unplanned), one handed, and block as my major skills. Against bandits I pretty much rule without any kind of thought, which is why I think it's too easy. Death Lords go down after a fierce fight, but still I don't have to think much and use all available tricks I have. I svck against magic users who can distant one-shot me sometimes, and I seriously have to use terrain and obstacles against dragons.

Point is that on occasion I can be owned if I play foolishly - and that's exactly how I remember dice games to be as well. Good role play is rewarded, bad role play is punished. The problem is that I don't feel like I have to "uber role play" (use all the tricks in the book) in order to survive, which I think should be a necessity on this difficulty. But of course without the slam and spam fest that occurred in Oblivion at max difficulty.

I can't imagine how easy the game must be on normal difficulty. Sounds more like a platform game than a role playing game. If I wanted the easy game fast paced runthrough, I'd just lower the difficulty to the easiest.

In my opinion, Master difficulty should only make the game realistic. You should die in 1-2 hits and you should be able to kill things that are similar to you (Bandits, Elves, Etc) in 1-2 hits. Other things like dragons and trolls are obvious expections. This would simply make you play more cautiously and require you to plan out your actions.

I hate games where upping the difficulty simply means that you need to whack the enemy 5000 times and they're cheap as $%^$.

But that doesn't make sense. If you slow the player leveling, he'll level slower ... But the world is level scaled to be at a similar level to the player. So if you slow player leveling, you also slow the monsters leveling by the same amount.

I juust find when people are talking about "balance" that they must be playing the game on Master difficulty. From every difficulty up to Hard Mode ive only had once instance of being one shotted in a dungeon with an unleveled Draugr Overlord who was using an Ebony Bow. I just feel the need to address thatthe point of Master difficulty is to play the game wqhere you the player has the absolute most disadvantages to overcome. Today actually, i started running into these casters who used these giant ranged frost attacks that one shot me. Rather then coming here and point out the lack of balance, I walked (I dont fast travel unless Lydia gets stuck and refuses to move) back to town, picked up frost resistance potions and went back to kick that mages butt.

^
That just about felt like the game I should be playing, not the god mode "I might as well be a Daedra Prince" mode that someone people on the forums are asking for. Demon Souls was a game hailed for its absolute difficulty curve and so many people voted it up for its difficulty not babysitting characters. This is something I wish more games looked into. I dont want to be a god, I want a challenge, if you want to be a God, switch your difficulty to the lowest settings.

I think that sentence tells the story. You expect there to be a collective agreement. That is an unrealistic expectation.

Theres a collective agreement the UI svcks and I would estimate a majority agree that the dialogue/speech options have been oversimplified.

Normally a game suffers from one of two scenarios. People come here claiming its too easy or its too hard. In this case, we have people claiming its both too easy and too hard. It seems like everyday more people are popping into both sides

people missuse the word balance, balance is about synergy and copetition of classes in pve and pvp enviroment in MMO's.
having said that there are skill related mechanics that definetely need fixing, and abusive exploits (crafting) need caps.

acide from that, people who play on master without exploitation will never ever say, with onesty, the game is easy, sure in thel ate stages if you made a well buildup character the game becomes less frequent in the challenging situations thrown at you, but still chalenging in the less comon content ment for those later stages of the game.

and the people who say its impossible, usually dont have experience with TES and havnt got theh ang of it, aswell as havnt figured out how to make solid character buildups.

Perhaps I'm seriously lagging in the gamer department but I play adept and I find that hard enough. I'm level 20 and I got killed by A BEAR last night.

Yes most stealth skills 80+, sneak 94, archery 60, one hand 70ish. One hand and Illusion (less than 25) only skills trained outside of stealth family, level 40 using perks. 200 health 330 stamina 150 magicka +50 health amulet. Also no enchant or smithed items, almost full glass set.

Up until now (level 41) Master has been a breeze, but I was just handed my ass by a simple Ice Mage Adept in one shot... with 80% Magic Resistance... and being a Nord....

If Krosis and an Ancient Dragon cannot one shot me, then how can a random mob do it (who should be the easiest to deal with being naturally resistant to frost).

Up until that point I was enjoying myself that just wound me up a bit.

You think that's bad.... I'm level 34 and still have 100 health. I'm getting one-shot by bandit thugs! But I love my pure-mage build.

Yeah

Most of the oldie TES players dont have any issues at all on Master as they know how to make their characters and such.

The lower levels are the rough patch and the later levels is when it gets waaaay too easy.

This is what they need to do to make Master's difficulty more of a challenge.

Dragons:
Make them shoot more frequently. They do decent damage and can kill you in 2 hits, but their infrequent attacks makes fighting them a breeze.
Make them appear less, but more powerful in general. This way dragons are few in between and more epic.

Monsters:
give them better threat assessment and awareness. I should not be able to sneak to kill them at range without them noticing.
give them drastic reduction to paralyze/stun/stagger/frozen
give them better targeting, monsters should always aim to kill the player and not be so easily distracted by summons/companions. There are spells to confuse your enemies, let us use them.

Enchanting:
remove bonuses to enchanting from potions/other enchanting gear

Smithing:
drastic reduction in bonus armor/damage
Make it harder to use common exploits to level smithing really fast. Smithing iron items should only level smithing up to a certain point/smithing glass items should only level smithing up to a certain point, etc.
remove bonus to smithing from potions/enchanted gear

Sneak:
drastically decrease the effectiveness of sneak once the player breaks out of 'hidden'.
remove bow x3 sneak attack damage.

Shouts:
Drastically Decrease amount of random dragon spawn on masters difficulty, makes choosing shouts an actual choice.