That IS quite odd. At first I thought maybe it was because my horse got teleported with me to the first one, but not the second. But yeah, when you watch it, it definitely feels like the first dragon is taking more damage from ME.

My best guess is try going to the exact area I did. The last area I visited always felt like a "boss" area; yknow like the enemies there are supposed to be tougher than usual, and I happen to know the Ancient Dragon I fought there isn't random, but rather he's always there. It's possible I'm dealing the same damage, but rather he has more HP to be more "boss-like," cause yeah, my one bow shot I did on the first dragon did more damage than my bow shots on the second one, too.

The entire reason for the perk system was to make your char more powerful. If you couldn't understand that, then this will keep going around in circles. You can put perks in skills you will never use, but don't put perks in your main skill tree and expect to be underpowered. Have you reset any of your perks yet?

As I mentioned before... The beauty of this game is how non complex the combat system is and you can choose to make your char as powerful or weak as you wish.

In the end, your decisions, and your choices alone determine your character.

Right, except enemies level. While you gain 20% more damage, they gain 20% more health. On the flip side, try playing this game WITHOUT perking your weapon skills: you'll ragequit at how tedious, boring and slow it all is.

Unfortunately, your 20% more damage reduction eventually overcomes their 20% more damage.

I am assuming this is the first Elder scrolls game you have played ? If it is welcome to one of the most accessible RPG series in history.

Made to be played by anyone for fun and not necessarily for people who enjoy spending time calculating their chance to hit an enemy during every move.

And yes I use the perk system to advance my character and make him stronger. All his training is turning him into a killing machine. LOVE IT!!

Yet again anyone who doesn't like Skyrim, just don't play it then. It's really and truly that simple.

the game plays just fine as it is and if you don't like what it is either get mods or stick to fallout.

Long knife have you reset any of your perks yet?

Possibly, if I'm not wrong the word wall dragons are 100% chance to appear so the stats might be less leveled than those of random dragons. Horse definitely can't dish out that much damage. Otherwise everyone would use horses.

I've been playing since Morrowind. :U

It's just that yeah, I'm finally losing my patience with bullet sponges. Every single game Bethesda releases, they fail to grasp that the key to interesting combat is to enhance both the enemy and player offense, NOT defense.

Offense-heavy battles are fast-paced, not at all time-consuming, exciting, require decent reaction time and though all combat is repetitive in ANY game, this ensures it doesn't get old quick since combat lasts mere seconds.

Defense-heavy battles are slow, tend to highlight stat gaps and differences between opponents which makes them predictable, give the player AMPLE time to save his own hide regardless of the situation, and the player finds himself spending multiple minutes fighting enemies he himself KNOWS he's bound to overcome.

Damage resistance needs a nerf, enemy HP needs to be dropped, player and enemy offense needs to be fairly strong.

Criticism can lead to improvement. If no one were to ever criticize the titles we don't like, then Beth would have nothing to listen to and nothing to go off of when making newer titles. Skyrim simply happens to be the newest title atm, thus it's subject to criticism since it's "setting the bar" for the next games.

Yeah I did.

And to all the people saying "If you dont like skyrim dont play it" please be quiet. Um yeah, that's why im here, because im not playing the game, and I would like future TES games to be better. Its not like Longknife is just bashing the game and saying "lol skyrim svcks so hard." He pointed out a problem and THEN provided a solution, which most of you ignored btw. We're allowed to talk about the game; this is a discussion forum not the Skyrim fan club. Anyone criticizing the the game and providing solutions is here for the betterment of the game whether you realize it or not.

Its OK we're the good guys.

But you obviously didn't reset your advanced armour perks try doing that and invest in magic perks you won't use.

That way you won't be investing in your main skills.

If you have been playing since morrowind, then you must have known how the combat system has been implemented.

Ok so for for the next TES game, don't buy it. chances are it will have the same Accessibility to any player regardless of their experience in RPGs and it will contain skills and perks to make your char more powerful.

People vote with their wallets.. And this series has been voted one of the best in history. The vast majority play it exactly as intended, and wouldn't want to see it changed.

Criticism only leads to improvement if you are actually doing against something that is legitimately broken. You have been told several ways to fix your problem yet you want to ignore it because you love to complain about the newer ES games and act like Fallout NV is some kind of gift to gaming.

You're still mistaking us for the bad guys, I (and at least most people here) didn't say he's either lying, wrong or that he's just bashing the game for no reason. I'm actually agreeing with what he's praising and I'm not even close to being a Skyrim really devoted fan (in fact I'm one of the Morrowind [censored] who finds more better things in Morrowind over Skyrim than I probably should), and I'm eve nadmitting that I was wrong and he was right. But I'm still claiming that I don't fare the same with the same or better stats against the same enemies, and I don't know what's the reason.

Because that doesn't work.

You either never die or die constantly. A middle ground is incredibly difficult to pinpoint. Just as I said in my video, just as that other guy clearly showcases in his video and just as common sense would dictate, I would suddenly be oneshot by basically everything if I lost my armor. Those dragons I fought? On Legendary difficulty they deal 900 base damage before any damage reduction. Without armor or with low armor, it WILL oneshot you.

But being oneshot is just as boring as being unstoppable. That's the other half of the complaint. The real complaint is that the game lacks the balance neccesary to provide a challenge. This thread and this criticism merely arose as "Skyrim is too easy" because typically people are going to prefer being overpowered and being able to advance in their travels to being underpowered and oneshot by anything with a pulse so that the game is ridiculously frustrating.

What the game needs is a way for enemies to damage you significantly without the difficulty being downright stupid-broken and frustrating. As it stands now though, perking defense and not perking defense is the difference between whatever pathetic amount I was taking while blocking in full armor (gonna estimate ~30 damage?) and 900 damage if I were naked/in unrefined leather armor not blocking at all.

I'm sure you're probably hitting harder than me, it just may not seem like it. I've never enchanted weaponry and that character isn't even fully perked with one handed, so he wouldn't be hard to beat damage-wise.

As for not fairing as well, sword and board, dual wielding and two-handed have different styles to using them with two-handed being the hardest. Sword and Board, I can literally just block all day long and NOTHING can touch me. Dual-wielding? I need a stamina build and the moment I'm in someone's face? Spam the power attack, which has a guarenteed stagger. (or technically you could cheese this; you only need 1 stamina to power attack, so you could just spam stamina potions and ingredients to spam the power attack, no excess stamina required) Enemies will die quicker to this and about the only downside this has vs. Sword and board is you take more damage along the way, but kill faster. Two-handed is just inferior in both regards, but you can weapon bash and deal damage all the same: you're just dealing less damage than dual-wielding and taking more damage than sword and board, so overall it's inferior and harder., though still completely doable.

You many hours have you play skyrim longknife?

Dang, I just put 1k hours into this game and I feel the need to complain. I am kidding I still love this game no matter what the flakking problems are. Keep up the good work Bethesda.

Ok how about playing a lower difficulty and not invest in any advanced smithing skills. It is easy to figure out the damage mitigation in this game. Tweak the game to get to where you want. You are obviously in the minority of Skyrim players, but Bethesda does give every player the chance to turn their char into any (tank, DPS, powerful but fragile Mage, assassin, etc etc)

I'm going to say it one more time, if you don't want to be a tank and absorb damage DO NOT INVEST IN ADVANCED SMITHING/ARMOUR PERKS)

Keep your char as average in these perks and the gameplay will change to reflect that.

I didnt mean it like that, I dont see you as the bad guys. I had a vigilante mindset when i was typing that. Typing up valid criticism but people only see it as complaining is all i meant. As for the rest of your post, fair enough.

Lots of people are offering advice but you are adamant you want complete game changes!


Yourself and maybe 2 other players want to revamp the combat system. When there is in fact no need for it! You have the ability to do it yourself!

Again have you reset your armor/smithing skills?

If you sincerely need help in turning your char in an mid level char then lets start looking at your stats and start looking at how we can do that. Lots of us are experienced in the TES series and can help you.

And thats the problem bro. Gimping yourself aka not doing things on purpose for the sake of having a challenge shouldn't have to happen. Its bad design and excuse for bad design at that, which makes it worse. Not to mention that you can become OP by just playing the darn game, wtf is that?

He's not looking for a change in Skyrim's combat. He's giving constructive feedback in hopes that a Beth dev will see and consider it at development discussions for the next TES.

The moment I would reset my armor and smithing skills, my complaint would go from "I never die" to "I literally can't kill a single thing."

The middle ground is ridiculously difficult to locate. Why? You start out at the bottom with absolute zero defense, so of course the moment you can, you start perking armor or smithing or both. Thing is, the system demands an investment in your armor or smithing ASAP, and you have NO IDEA what the best perk-armor combination is to achieve the desired result. You're in the dark completely and you're doing guesswork, and if you happen to guess "I need 3 of the 5 armor perks to be decent" and you're wrong, you IMMEDIATELY cross the line into "overpowered" territory again.

And as I've said, the player shouldn't be expected to gimp themselves to provide challenge to themselves; that's the game's job. As I said in my anology, you would never purposefuily mis-use a block in Tetris to provide yourself with more challenge. Or if you DID decide to purposefully mis-use a Tetris block? You have absolutely no way of knowing if that's neccesary, because you don't know if that concious mistake will lead to your game over or being something you can overcome. If it did lead to your loss? You better believe you'd never do that again. No, you play your best and expect Tetris to challenge you. Exact same concept here.

Yup it was made that way by design to be accessible to even a retiree with no RPG experience but lots of time to play.

It is a simp,e but very fun combat system. It is also the main reason Bethesda is one of the most profitable RPG designers in the world. Their games don't follow complex hit/roll calculations.

Hack and slash with a great story is what makes this game great! Or if you don't want to hack and slash you don't have to either !!!!

No need to rewrite the system because it is working exactly as intended. If you don't enjoy it, but have insisted on playing hundreds of hours per game since MW, then you have others at hand.

I don't really enjoy RTS series like Starcraft. So I will not buy it then go on their forums to demand change to a very popular and successful series.

Skyrim combat system is working as intended and if you don't like it, either change your gameplay or don't bother to play if it frustrates you so much!!!

The vast majority also complained level 81 wasn't good enough. The vast majority also stated Destruction is broke. The vast... oh, sorry, that's a bit of generalization on my part. This forum is filled with many, many people who aren't happy with the way Skyrim was designed.

People didn't vote with their wallets. They "voted" when their friends said "Dude! Check out how gorgeous Skyrim is and it's so easy to play! Don't I look awesome in this dragon armor! Sweet!"

I don't have any problem with people enjoying the game for its aesthetics nor do I care if they want to exploit their game with OI, etc.

What I do care about is these people are making a loud enough noise the game is "broken" because they couldn't get every perk in the game and level 81 is "stoopid".

1.9 was released. Did you see what it did? Yeah, so please don't tell me "voting with their wallet" is what gave 1.9. People complained, and Bethesda "fixed" the problem.

But let's put this aside for a second. Want to know how to please even more people? Watch this!

In TES VI, Bethesda should remove the armor rating completely. Instead, have their artists develop a boatload of awesome looking armor. They can take a cue from the modding community.

Then, and here's where the fun stuff starts, the difficulty slider is the damage threshold so that everyone can enjoy the game. How?

Default is 50%. This means if an attack deals 100 damage, player receives 50 of it. Armor doesn't matter. It's just style anyway.

Those of us who want a challenge can slide that puppy down to 0%, which means of that 100, we're taking it all.

Those who find 50% too hard can slide it up to 90%, which means of that 100, they're taking 10.

Simple. Elegant. And works for everyone.

Armor just becomes eye candy, which is what it is anyway.

I am, I'm dealing about 2-3 times more damage than you are, but I'm either loosing too much stamina or too much health, with sword and board build (and when I'm making a tanking build I usually go for all points spent into health and cover all my stamina needs with enchantments). Lol maybe I'm using difficulty mods for so long that I've been left in denial about these things. I've had a lot of complaints about other things in this game, but never the difficulty as long as I play on hardest.

In any case as soon as I get access to the laptop I'm playing on I'll switch to vanilla and try the same locations, I'm really curious about the results I'll get now.

While I do like the idea of damage reduction not being in % I also think that they should also simply change AI (enemies should be either more agressive and attack more often or block more and spend their time moving away from you, NPCs in vanilla spend too much time doing nothing in front of you), and what I'd find to be a much better "hardcoe" mode would be that blocking and dodging should mean no damage at all while being directly hit 1-3 times should mean death. And it should work both for you and NPCs. But that's just me.

The mod setup I'm currently using is much closer to it than vanilla but still not quite there; mods can only do so much. But basically at the level I can a kill bandit chief, direct hits from a wolf will still hit me for 1/3 of my health. That's at least how it should look like in vanilla, at least in my opinion.

I still claim that Destruction is broken, you're either dealing very pathetic damage, or you're stun-locking everything on your path (while damage is still pathetic but post mid-game your enemy basically can't move and you're more than capable of having 100% cost reduction).

Destruction's damage sadly isn't even governed by perks because vanilla, sadly, has no damage perks for the main offensive school. So it all comes down to 2 perks, dual casting and Impact, the rest of the perks are completely useless. But why would I use that when I can use Archery and deal a lot more damage than that, and even more if I'm sneaking.

Meh... I like my "Ebony Warrior difficultly" slider option that replaces ALL NPC enemies with Ebony Warrior clones doing 15x the normal damage to the player only.