This feels right. I tend to end up at about 75% difficulty with the slow increase in difficulty.


But I don't have to whack a rat a hundred times.
Currently difficulty is set to about 65 percent.
Endurance is maxed at 65.
My primary killing skill is Blade which is at level 55.
Level 7 Knight of the White Stallion

Rats, timber and regular wolves, mudcrabs, blah blah blah (read: low-end enemies) I can kill with one sword swing.
The average bandit fight lasts about 30 seconds. I have a real chance of getting seriously hurt during this encounter, at least at my current level.
I can handle two goblin melee fighters, but I cannot handle three. Run, run, run away when this happens.
Archers are no big deal, I just sidestep the arrow and charge them, forcing them to go melee.
I get a variety of encounters at this difficulty setting. I enjoy playing out of my comfort zone, I want the challenge to last throughout this character's journey, not just for the first five levels or so. My characters don't attack everything they see... often moving away if the encounter looks too difficult, at least above ground where I have that option. If something is too tough, I run away and come back.
Perfect example:
Just went into Timberscar Hollow. No problem at all with all the melee warriors until I got to the shaman. He kicked my butt so bad that I left, fled. My character had to go to town to get more alchemical ingredients to create more potions. (He has 100 or so gold, and cannot afford to buy ready-made potions.)
Then he went back. Just barely beat that shaman. I think the last health potion that I had created saved me. Accomplishment... a tough quest notched on the haft of his weapon. Overcoming the odds. Priceless.

This is one of the silliest things in the game. An arrow is going to be traveling at something like 200+ miles per hour; good luck sidestepping that. You can't even see it coming.

You’re right that you couldn’t dodge an arrow if fired at normal ranges. A 30 inch arrow at full draw of a bow of 75 pound draw weight initial velocity is roughly 450 ft/sec. Do the math and that comes out to a little over 300 MPH initial velocity. The velocity decreases over time due to drag. However, you might be able to see it coming at you if it was bright shiny aluminum. I used to shoot muzzle loading rifles and you could watch the shiny lead balls after you fired them at 100 or more yards.

They do. My family did archery together when I was young. And I'm a little embarrassed to admit this now but when my parents weren't around I used to shoot arrows straight up into the sky. I would watch them disappear and then wait, breathless, quivering with anticipation, for them to come back to earth. I was able to spot them coming pretty easily and step out of the way without being hit.

That sounds a pretty dangerous thing to do. But I take it from you typing that you never had any accidents! Thank heavens xD

On topic; I don't pay attention to the slider for a few reasons. First I have always svcked at games so I struggle on hard. I don't like the pot spam route that hard seems to suggest and really don't understand the mechanics enough to be able to be the perfect ninja/mage warrior. I often RP characters who are not perfect at combat so that it feels more realisitc that I am svcking when in battle. I play on easy saves all the hassle. I'm not really into a 'challenge' or 'beating' the game. To me it is all about the exploration, roleplay and faffing about!

Terminal velocity on a falling arrow is nowhere near the speed where it leaves a bow, though. We used to play "archery golf" with hay bales for targets (I grew up on a farm.) You had to shoot the arrow at a very high angle to get maximum distance on your "drive," and if you managed to hit a hay bale with a high arcing shot, the shaft only penetrated a couple of inches. Sometimes it would hit the ground or the bale and just bounce around or fall over. On the other hand, if you used much draw on a direct near shot, it would penetrate deeply.

My comment about not seeing it coming has more to do with reaction time. If an arrow is shot at you from, say, 100 feet away, it will arrive in less than half a second. You might have time to react to the fact that it was coming, and even glimpse it in flight, but a human simply wouldn't have time to also step out of the way. I could believe that it might be possible to deflect an arrow with a shield or even an armored hand, if it was shot from far enough away, and if you were aware of it being shot.

Major league baseball hitters can just barely hit a ball traveling 100 miles per hour. A pitcher cannot react quickly enough to catch or dodge a line-drive (maybe 120 miles per hour) that's hit straight back at them, from 60 feet away, and that's going considerably slower than an arrow.

Ummm, I'm talking about in-game you know. As a former college baseball player.... I used to be able to whack a 95 mph fastball consistently. When the pitcher catches the ball, as it files right back to them, it's not so much reaction time, as it is a reaction to a TYPE of hit ball, and thus the mitt goes up, to the spot where that TYPE of hit ball, usually goes. When the ball is hit (speaking ONLY from an outfielder's perspective) it has a certain characteristic that lends itself to that TYPE of hit ball. Thus, the reaction is different, based on the perceived type of ball it is.
If I get a fast grounder (used to be center field) I position my mitt in such a way, knowing that there is going to be some randomness in the way the ball squiggles along the hard field... If I get a different ball hit to me in the air, I position my mitt in a different way.

That was real life.
In Oblivion, I can anticipate the archer, call it bad AI, whatever, and side step, rush, stop and block with shield if available, or sidestep again and whack away!
That's what I was getting at, whether it is realistic or not. I know in reality, that arrow should rock through time and space in no time. But we are in Cyrodiil. So we make the best of what we are offered.

Oh, you're right. I was just running with the idea. The game physics is all different; that slow-moving arrow carries enough kinetic energy that it knocks the enemy right into the air, but only if it kills him.

Since we're on the topic of arrows, I find I can usually move about a half-second before I hear the arrow get shot. If my char. moves just as it's getting shot, this increases the chance of me being hit.

In other words, those arrows do come flying pretty fast. They're cerainly much faster than ranged spells.

Interesting that one hidden sentence in Big Daddy′s post could spin off like that

yea. Ain't that the truth?

To quote Decrepit; "Aye"

People often forget that we are indeed in Cyrodiil here and not in "the real world". Often what′s normal there isn′t normal here. Anyway, interesting read as I have a Mongolian bow of my own

Pffft, you can do more than that. Xena: Warrior Princess can catch arrows. I've seen her do it with my own eyes. *points to eyes* She can catch two arrows, one in each hand (though season 1 episode 2 demonstrates that she is somewhat less effective at catching three arrows). She even taught her perky little sidekick Gabrielle how to catch arrows and if Gabrielle can do it anybody can do it. I know what I'm talking about: I have boxes of DVDs right here that prove conclusively that human eye-hand-coordination is faster than arrows.

What makes me cringe is when the arrow goes through the shield, and in third person you see the arrow right on the wrist...*cry*

But yea I also seen Xena catch arrows
I can also catch arrows! With my body ,yay!

The combat certainly does get mundane at higher levels, especially when you're playing on the console without the help of mods to refresh the combat. At higher levels, it feels like I'm just hitting a sponge, like those [censored] gloom wraiths that takes forever to kill and knocks you back a lot. I always sigh when I see one of them.

Way back when, our house dog ran an opossum up a tree in the backyard. Being kids on a farm, we had shot up all the ammo that wasn’t locked up, so my bro, the archer, proceeds to take on the mighty ’possom with his bow while I held the 7 cell flashlight (torch). After a few unsuccessful shots, I started to hear the unsettling thunk of the arrows coming back down. I got under the eaves of the house while bro continued to pound that poor ’possom. Finally, after a dozen or so arrows, he shot it out of the tree. Next morning the backyard looked like it was growing arrows. Kids are really mentally deficient. (Definition: House Dog - a dog that lives outside, guarding the place and barking whenever anything comes within 100 yards.)

This is way off-topic now (but who cares at this point) but I just started watching Xena a few months ago, and have slowly been progressing thru each one. They got all the episodes on Netflix, so I can watch at my leisure. And yes, I have seen the episode where she catches arrows. She does a lot of wacky things.

It's the one thing that bothers me about the show. I know it's fantasy, but it's like she never screws up! It's like''...come on... I don't know why it bugs me, but after awhile, it does.

I frickin' love Gabby, though. The main reason I continue to watch is I love the interactions between Xena and Gabby. She's so awesome.

Sorry.

/wayyyyoff-topic

One more possible approach. I play dead-is-dead which means if my character dies in the game, I will never load and play that character again. I can guarantee you that any character can die on any 'diff' setting if the circumstance is right. For that reason, I leave the 'diff' slider on default. I do everything I can to give my characters a fighting chance but I do not set caps on their level and most of them have reached very high levels where the bad guys are very, very bad. I believe that this adds a realism to the game that has made me more sympathetic to my character and been much more immersive. I play every moment as though my character is fully aware of their mortality. When they do something heroic it is truly heroic and simple mundane activities can become bittersweet and precious knowing that this could be the last day of their life.

When Severus Snape lost faith in humanity and chose to end his life rather than be the hero and save them, my mind was screaming "NO!" and yet I knew this was the way he would feel in the situation he was in. We had travelled together for over 700 hours. I knew his cynical outlook and his secret desire to be liked. I knew his clipped cultured voice and rigid attitudes. In the middle of an epic battle, when there was help standing all around and leaving him to do the dirty work, he lowered his guard and began his last rites to the Nine. I was weeping even before he died.

My friend, this truly shows just how deep a collection of pixels can affect us. I commend you on being able to reach such a level of intimacy with Severus Snape. May he rest in peace

That′s deep, bobg. I could never do that with Lothran.

Never.

I could do it for you.

If you do not know whether something is right or wrong, then it is wrong. Every last excuse will be supporting a way to make the wrong feel right. I belive it to be an exploit, and not cheating. Cheating would be breaking a rule and I say there aren't any in-game rules.

This. Once the player enacts a DiD rule in the game and sticks to it, default difficulty doesn't seem so "easy" anymore.

Back when Skyrim was released, all the WoW/CoD players were complaining Skyrim is "too easy on Master". I was like: yea...you try that [censored] with DiD going on, see how "easy" it is.

I'm sorry, but this statement is illogical. It is entirely possible choose a 'right action' by accident. That this action was chosen by accident does not mean the action is necessarily or automatically wrong. A child who does not understand what is right or wrong in a given situation (removing one's shoes before entering a Japanese house, for example) might very well choose to do what is considered 'right' without being able to articulate why it is right. After all, we have a fifity-fifty chance of choosing a 'right' action in any given situation.



If there aren't any in-game rules there can be no exploits. By definition, an exploit is a circumvention of the rules.

Back on topic: I have one char, played from the start on 100% difficulty. After 50 hours it got way too boring. Conjuration is at 100 so all my conjured creatures do the fighting for me. Because I'm a high elf apprentice I'm extremely vulnerable to magic. One shot of a Storm Atronach instantly killes me, even at level 35.

Now I play at 60%-70% difficulty. This works out pretty well because I can still one shot little pesky creatures, like mudcrabs and rats, but bigger creatueres take a few more hits. The only problem are Xivilai, these take a long time to take down, even with a daedric warhammer, enchanted with elemental damage.