Go play Fallout then...what's the point of hating on a game that you clearly don't like in the forum section that's solely setup for talking about it? I don't like FO or Morrowind but I never once posted in either section talking about the things I don't like as it's pointless B.S.

People play what they like, if you don't like Skyrim then simply don't play...making videos to show why you don't like it has to be the lamest form of hate that I've seen in awhile.

Ok, video's finally done processing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddtqyVeolb0

Before the complaints come in about this and that:

-There's a lot of text talking in that vid. None of you need to bother reading it because it's basically just what I said in the last thread. Feel free to do nothing but watch my health bar.

-Yes, I consider it quite boring too. It's merely meant to show me just loading up the game, fighting on Legendary so you can see the exact kind of damage I take with capped armor and magic resistance and me playing with an intent to...yknow, live?

-I literally just loaded up my most recent character file and hunted tougher enemies in areas I knew they frequented. The entire video is just one take: no reloads, no excess planning, no nothing. Yes, I would've liked to have found more mages or draugr, but they simply weren't there.

-Likewise, I just grabbed a character. This character is by no means "godlike" to the extent that it's clear I was TRYING to max stuff out: it just happened as a result of the character roleplay I had in mind. I wanted a pure warrior, he ended up being OP anyways even though he doesn't really touch stealth or magic. He svcks at everything that isn't a warrior skill, and hell due to some experimenting with the legendary skills system, he's sub-par with his armor and weapon too, but hasn't gotten a chance to utilize all those enchanting perks I grabbed.

-Keep in mind that this entire time, I could take a piece of two of my armor off and I'd have the polar opposite effect, with my character dropping dead almost immediately. That is part of the problem.

Having said that, if you don't want to watch the whole thing (understandable), then....

Jump to 4:30 to see Arch-mages

Jump to 7:00 to see a dragon

Jump to 9:00 for draugr deathlords with a dragon

Yknow what I would love? If people actually addressed my arguments themselves instead of resorting to ad hominem attacks because they can't actually provide a good argument to things I've said.

Hell, the ENTIRE reason I bothered to upload a video? My Tetris anology nobody dared touch was met with someone accusing me of lying about playing Legendary difficulty or how easy it was. I'll provide proof time and time again until people swallow this bitter pill, but I don't see why you seem so hesitant to criticize a part of a game you play. Heaven forbid we expect improvement for FO4 and TES 6.

I agree alot with the points longknife made in the other thread, but this video thing seems to me like taking it abit too far..

TES games have always been full of exploits, all the way back to the beginning. Combat has never been the focus, for better or worse. They rather focus on world building and exploration.

And these things are exclusive to one another. I've yet to come across any game that's been able to prove me otherwise, and honestly I would love to be proved wrong. A game with a great open world for exploration and solid combat would be amazing. Maybe the Witcher 3? I haven't gotten a chance to try those games out personally to say.

But as it stands, TES games set out to create an open world for the player to explore, and that's what Skyrim is. TES games aren't built with challenging combat in mind.

Mods can somewhat change that, but even after modding it's still no Dark Souls, and I think thats a good thing.

Well when someone's accusing me of lying about my own personal experience with a game and refusing to actually ADDRESS the points I made because he considers me a liar, then yes, I'll provide evidence I'm not lying so we can kindly get on with our lives.

ha I actually addressed you several times in the previous thread with valid points on how to work within and around all of your hangups yet you seem to avoid those and continue to complain....therefore I have come to the conclusion that you just wish to whine and knock Skyrim while saying how it should be more like New Vegas and blah blah blah; so I say if you like NV better then go play it and stay out of Skyrim

Oh and please tell me what's constructive about posting a vid "Skyrim's for pansies"?

I play on legendary a lot, and I know you have to go a good bit out of your way to make the game easy. Even with lots of enchantments and full armor resistance. Thats been my experience. Often times I go heavy on enchantments augmenting them with potions, then it starts feeling better, but not easy. People who play legendary know what I mean. Different experiences I suppose, but doesn't matter to me. The difficulty feels perfect and I've never had more fun on Skyrim before since I don't feel the need to gimp myself anymore.

Humor me. What were these wonderful fix-everything solutions you provided?

Because knowing the character in that video was created with the sole intent of being a warrior and utilizing all the warrior skills and basically none of the mage or thief ones (Light armor as the exception), I still ended up being overpowered entirely by accident. I perked the skills a warrior would and ended up overpowered. What the hell was I supposed to do and how the HELL was I supposed to magically know when to stop putting perks where in order to get the "ideal" difficulty level?

I shouldn't have to carefully plan my character JUST to make sure it doesn't end up too weak or too strong, but that's the way it is. Characters typically get oneshot or never ever ever die. The middle ground is rather difficult to find.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfSRQUTeTgY, except this guy has the armor cap but NOT the magic cap. Infact, he has 0% magic resistance, as he states in the video. Ignore the werewolf snippets (because I'm not sure what those put his armor rating at) and focus on the normal damage his character takes, followed by the magic damage his character takes. He goes from being an absolute tank to normal damage to literally being one shot by any magic attack.

See the problem here? The difficulty shouldn't be that polarizing, but it is. And it is because the combat is basically hack 'n' slash with your stats meaning EVERYTHING. And don't get me wrong, that can work out. The problem is it CAN'T work out with the childishly simplistic armor system the devs created, because 80% is a huge gap between the best and the worst that they somehow have to compensate for.

Accolades to Longknife.

The video speaks the truth. Some people obviously still wish to remain in denial that the only way to enjoy Skyim is to purposely gimp characters and hope it's enough to clear the next dungeon.

I concur. Bring forth the DT/DR mechanics in TES VI!

Finally, to the notion of "you are in control", now you can see why players are never in control.

I'd add more icons, but the post message said I exceeded the limit.

As I said, I just think DT or an extremely gimped damage resistance system is easier to balance.

As it stands now, if I run around Fallout New Vegas with 50 damage threshold, anything that's on par with a mudcrab, basic bandit, mediocre bandit or otherwise? They hit me for the exact same 20% damage seen in the Skyrim video. Basically, that 50 damage threshold means that any average or below-average enemy hits me for nothing to the point where I'm immortal to them in a fight consisting solely of that enemy type BUT they do provide collateral damage that can add up and effect a fight vs. stronger enemies. Meanwhile, that 50 DT does basically NOTHING vs the strongest enemies that are on par with dragons, centurions and draugr deathlords. Sure, it helps, but I still have to be very cautious around those.

But in Skyrim, it's 20% across the board. So when mudcrabs start hitting me low, so does everything else. When dragons start hitting me high, so does everything else.

Finally, a surely unintended issue created by this system? Magic resistance and damage resistance are completely independent of one another. The problem with this is that let's say, purely hypothetically, that I DO find that magic sweet-spot of damage resistance where enemies are challenging but not TOO challenging. I now have to go out of my way to somehow balance out my magic resistance the exact same way, or else magic enemies will be too hard or too easy and single-handedly ruin everything. The other guy's video I linked is a prime example of this. He would probably prefer playing on Legendary for -some- increased difficulty from enemies, but he literally CANNOT because the moment a mage is involved in a fight, he's toast. There's absolutely nothing he'll be able to do vs a powerful mage, no matter how well he plays. This forces him to either go out of his way to get his magic resistance up or go out of his way to keep his damage resistance low enough to be on par with his magic resistance.

I also enjoy the elements of FO where certain enemies can negate any DR/DT threshold. Deathclaws are always fearsome because their attacks are always at max since they ignore DR/DT.

Dragons should have this. If TES VI doesn't have dragons in the game, then give the option to several other enemies.

But yeah, you hit the nail right on the head of trying to manage two damage resistant types. I hadn't thought of that.

Wonderful! More... FO is better than TES!

I knew it wouldn't take long before that cheap stab would come into play.

I play both, but it gets really irritating when it you people try to use one against the other.

nvmd, I don't care enough to join in. Please continue.

Not at all, damage threshold is simply the nearest alternative that functions better.

Another alternative would simply be to cut the habit of capping damage resistance at 80% and cap it at something like ~40%, lowering all enemy damage a bit in response. That would work too, it's just that damage threshold and directly subtracting armor from damage seems more flexible and appropriate, imo, because what that does is it tends to effectively "negate" any damage from weak enemies while leaving the strong enemies untouched and free to continue hitting heavy amounts.

But just off the top of my head, say that instead of dealing 300 damage, the end-game dragons dealt 200, but damage resistance maxed out at 40%. What this would do is close the gap between those that have the best armor and those that wish to play without armor. Those with armor would take 120 damage, those without would take 200, for a difference of 80 damage total. That's enough to be significant and encourage you to use armor, but not enough to make armor literally turn you into a god.

This is better than what we have now, where the damage difference between the best armor and unarmored is -literally- a whopping 240 points of damage, with the unarmored guy taking the full 300 damage (or up to 900 on Legendary, which NOBODY can survive) while the armored guy takes 60. (which again is only 180 on Legendary)

Above all, the giant gap between character types simply needs to be reduced so that enemies can be made more one-size-fits-all and challenging for every character type, not "be weak if you want to die, be strong if you want to never die ever."

Agreed 100%

But this wouldn't work with the brilliant way they designed Skyrim's level-up system. Only a focused Warrior can reach 500 health points... by level 50. For this to work, Health/Magicka/Stamina would have to increase more then 10 per level.

Or you'd have to reduce the amount of damage the enemies do currently.

That's a given. I mean with any system, you have to consider the scale and range of enemy damage, the range of potential armor sets, etc etc etc. Damage threshold or a smaller-scale damage resistance system are no exception; they'd still have to sit down and ask themselves how much HP they want the player to be able to have, how much the enemies will have, etc.

My main complaint though is Skyrim's current system just wreaks of "YA LET'S START WITH 100 OF EACH STAT CUZ 100 IZ SHINY NUMBER" and absolutely no consideration was put into the scope and range of the stats at play beyond how shiny they look. The results are abysmal.

Make no mistake, my complaint isn't exclusive to Skyrim. Fallout 3 had the exact same problem, as did Oblivion and Morrowind. (heck Morrowind had it worse, though they did enemy health much much better; no bullet sponges) 80% is a magic number they've held onto for ages, and I'm beginning to wonder if the only reason they're holding onto it is out of a fear of change, as I see no logic or particular benefit behind the number 80.

For the exact same reasons, I find myself eventually putting down FO3. FO3 has it slightly better and worse though; better because you don't need to monitor both a damage AND magic resistance, worse because for SOME odd reason, the developers made it so that if you enter VATS, your damage resistance automatically caps out at 80%. So even if you make an effort to not max your DR, it maxes itself out every time you use VATS (which is rather hard to avoid using in FO3), leaving you less control over your own character strength.

80% Damage resistance is even possible and equally as broken in Fallout New Vegas, but luckily it's not nearly as much of an issue because it requires the player combine three different consumables, two of which are rather time-consuming to mass-produce and it'd be rather difficult to create enough to consume all three together regularly.

This is why I say Oblivion did it right. Although certainly not perfect, the leveling was on par with the player, and maxed out about level 25, keeping a few enemies for the player to deal with which never capped out.

With Oblivion, using enchantments and better gear was a necessity, and OP didn't happen until late levels. In Skyrim, OP happens right out of Helgen, unless people think slapping a wolf around with an iron axe is challenging.

It boggles my mind how people miss that, at level 10, wolves are replaced with sabercats but somehow don't see how instantly stronger they are. Oh, right. They had 9 levels to power up.

I'll just add my two cents. So in the video we have a char using the best armor in game, and smithed it to legendary. And then complains his armor is too effective.???????

I've only played skyrim for around 140 hours on original char (due to schedule) and only got half way through main quest. This series was NEVER based on making combat as challenging as say a D&D or some MMO games. This series was and hopefully will always be story based and open ended gameplay where you choose to do what you like and combat is secondary.

I believe this game has a near perfect balance of combat and story telling accessible to anyone, whether they have 5 hours a week to invest or 80. If they change the game dynamics to make it much harder to complete simple quests, I would get very tired real quick.

What make this one of the most successful RPG series in history, is the fact that it is a hack and slash game (within a story) which just about anyone can enjoy.

Or they could bring back a silly thing called Attributes instead of having the overly simplistic add 10 points to your health every level up.

I did not know this. I just assumed VATS was a system that temporarily enhanced player weapon skill, and the slow motion was watching its effect. Sort of like a drug, without the addiction.

When I play again, I'll have to check this out. Deathclaw, here I come!

The character was merely an example. The problem is that you can easily hit the armor cap with orcish, elven, scaled...you name it. The only other character I could've shown that I have at the armor cap is wearing orcish. You can read wiki articles yourself though and find that you can hit the armor cap with any armor type. Or hell, load up the game yourself and put on a set of steel armor with mild smithing skills (what flawless?) on a character that has heavy armor perked.

You either have to avoid smithing entirely, avoid perking your armor type entirely, or avoid both. Otherwise, you WILL hit the cap, and the moment you do, the game ceases to be at all challenging.

Best way to test is to find an enemy with a Fat Man or missle launcher, and then as you see the projectile coming for you, enter VATS. Don't even worry about hitting your target, just queue up VATS long enough so that you'll be in it when the projectile hits. You'll find yourself surviving blasts you clearly wouldn't be if you weren't in VATS.

Another reason VATS might seem more "essential" and godlike in FO3 but rather sub-par in New Vegas is because FO3 VATS awards 15% extra crit rate. Considering that crit rate is constant regardless of a weapon's condition and most weapons in FO3 are in disrepair, suddenly VATS significantly increases your damage output.

The details on it are documented http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault-Tec_Assisted_Targeting_System.

EDIT: And I stand corrected. FO3 had the highest possible damage resistance, with VATS offering 90% damage reduction.

"You either have to avoid smithing entirely, avoid perking your armor type entirely, or avoid both."

You nailed it!!!!!! If you hate being OP then stop making OP chars!!!!!!!! That is a choice you make .... Your char isn't born OP, you choose to make him/her OP!!

! Ohh damn look at me sounding like a rightwinger!

But it is the main reason so many people thoroughly enjoy this game!

So answer me this: what the HELL am I supposed to do with my perk points?

And how the HELL is this a case of "you should've known putting perk points in skills you utilize would've made you OP!!" Why the HELL would I assume I become OP for actually using them? I'd assume it's EXPECTED of me to use them and therefore the game is balanced around using them.

That's exactly the problem: we shouldn't become overpowered just by utilizing the tools and features we've been provided with, but as it stands, you basically have to actively avoid 1/3rd of the character content in order to avoid being OP. You can't touch block, you can't touch stealth, you can't touch either armor tree, you can't touch enchanting, you can't touch smithing, you can't touch alchemy and there's a select few here and there you shouldn't touch either.

This wreaks of poor balance and game design if we find ourselves having to avoid content they bothered to include in the game.

Don't think anyone here specifically said that you are lying, we were just disagreeing.

About the vid I guess you proved your point but maybe I should make a test character and make a video of him as well to prove mine; for one with reached armor rating cap I've been getting a LOT more damage than you do in your video, and at the same time I'm not dealing as much damage as you are to ancient dragons with weapons with a lot more damage than your skyforge sword. This confuses me.

And what's up with damage inconsistencies when fighting a dragon at 7:00 comparing to one you're fighting post 10 minutes?

An interesting read. Thanks. All this time, I thought the extra damage done by VATS was because shots were more accurate from the assist.

I don't like the sneak damage award of any of these games. I find it a ridiculous mechanic a bullet/arrow/dagger/whatever somehow magically produces twice+ its damage output just because the person didn't see it coming.

I don't mind VATS assist in increasing damage as part of the weapon, but if the extra damage is coming from crits.... ugh. Sort of a downer, really.

So, I'm going to pretend VATS makes my shots count and doesn't use crits at all.

No one's complaining that armor is too effective, they're saying that difficulty balancing in skyrim svcks, which it does. Longknife became overpowered playing the game as intended as anyone would when they pick up a game. I posted this in the beyond skyrim topic, but I'll say it again: Bullet sponges are no substitute for difficulty. Unarmored enemies on master with hundreds of health are no different from an enemy on novice in terms of smarts.