I've always wanted to fly into a street and blast guards aside with a spell or strike. So yeh I love becoming overpowered.

I like how guards improve as you do, to make crimes and killing them a challenge. But, I think they should stop when you reach a certain level so that you can eventually beat them easily if you want and instead of running away and losing them, you can beat them easily.
I hope that guards are easier defeat because if you can kill a dragon, you can swat guards away like flies.

totally disagree.

GOD mode: on & off

way more fun to be able to crush your enemies with a single hit. I find it very satisfying.

The reasons some people are anti-power (at least the way it has come across to me) are because they want the strategy aspect of the game, or because they think it is too easy just being able to kill everything in one shot. To have to think and fight instead of just killing is what they want. That is fine for whoever wants that.

I for one like kind of a mixture. If I can take down smaller animals, weaker humans, and maybe even some armored guards in one slice, then I feel very satisfied. However, I do want a challenge so having to fight for a long time against a heavily armored enemy or a huge buff creature makes it more exciting and I come out feeling like in the long run I am the badest of the bad if I could beat a really hard enemy.

I think if I become a level 79 (ehh, maybe its possible), I'm probably some kind of a demigod. And if I've worked hard enough to become a level 79 demigod, then I think I've earned my right to be a demigod!
Sometimes its fun to play an overpowered character, sometimes its not. As long as becoming overpowered is difficult, not approachable in 3 hours, then I think its great.

Balance is essential in your first playtrough, but if you want to and if you are tactical in your characterbuild the game should award you and let you become more than averagely stronger than anybody else. I allways make one overpowered character for fun. It's just another way to 'beat' the game, making the strongest character possible . Nothing wrong with that. I also make a very weak character, for the same reasons. Someone who can only deal with enemies if he's high on drugs, boose and whatever available.

In Morrowind and Oblivion efficient levelling was too easy. All it reguired was time and hard (boring) skill-spamming. With FO3's perksystem things got a little more interesting, and you had to plan out your build from the first levels. I'm looking forward to this system in Skyrim. The harder (more challenging) it is to build a demi-god, the better.

It's all about having fun.

I kind of agree with you here. I mean there are some things I want to be able to kill. There is no reason that killing a mudcrab should take more than one hit with a mace. I also think that if I get the jump on some pathetic necromancer or chapel healer I should be able to dominate them. And I also want to have a challenge killing things like giants, high up Daedra and people like guards (seeing how they are trained soldiers you would think they are somewhat adept at fighting). Like you said, I am one of those who plays strategically. I plot my path from A to B and choose which person I will use a sneak attack on, who I lure into a trap, etc. The only thing is I want the strong enemies to be a long fight because they are smart, not just because they are damage sponges.

Well Ostrava have you ever compared the Mythos of Abrahamic Religions to the Mythos of Hellenic Religions? Zeus, Aphrodite, Hermes and Poseidon all have unique, diverse and thoroughly developed personalities. Yahweh (AKA Jehovah, Allah or most commonly just God) has no character except maybe being all loving and yet vengeful (and not shown as being in conflict, undermining the character further). Yahweh has no limits to his power; he knows all, sees all and has the power to destroy and create without limits. Hellenic Gods may have a power hierarchy (ie Zeus is more powerful than Hephaestus) but the extent is not a severe. As a result of having limitations that allowed others to challenge them (a plethora of other Gods and a number of Demi-Gods) Hellenic Gods developed character. You cannot have any being that is so much stronger than everything else and still have them have fully fleshed out characters. I realize this brings up the matter of the Bonus Bosses/Dungeons of DOOM, but lets not forget Yahweh has the Devil to compete with and he still has no character. The too powerful concept still holds for characters, even if there are one or two remote, secret places that can give him a run for his money.

Does that mean every Bandit should be a challenge at high levels? No, they should be below you but flipping your hair shouldn't one shot the entire room.

And if you don't like my characterization of Hellenic Gods as fantasy characters you have my sincere apologies :tongue:

Whether OP is a problem or not, completely depens on how early in the game it happens, and how OP you really are. If you're OP after playing for 100 hours, then that's not a big deal. But if you are OP after maybe 10-20 hours, then that is way too imba and it will affect the overall playability of the game and thus how many people will think the game is good (and thus buy it).

Nobody wants an unchallenging game, because it's boring and repetitive.

This is reminiscent of a thread about becoming a Lich. Someone complained that "it wasn't fair to the developers" for people to abuse unbalanced stuff or cheat (which makes no sense). I general, I'd echo what many have stated already: there should be OP weapons or player transformations, but they should be difficult to find/obtain.

Fallout New Vegas did a decent job. I got absolutely destroyed frequently at the beginning of the game and was terrified of every red blip. There was a time when I was level 3 and I used every bit of ammo I had in a run-in with a Radscorpion. Hopefully they can put that kind of difficulty curve in Skyrim.

Really? I thought they did a pretty mediocre job at best. Energy weapons were totally underpowered and they nerfed a few weapons into ineffectiveness through patches. they went for overt 'balance' and ended up unbalancing the game.

There is overpowered and the there is Overpowered. The Lich transformation question raised is a clear case of it should be powerful but not too much so. Items that make you way too overpowered should have no lore, a cheap and overdramatic story and should be hard to discover and stumble into. Players should be able to get from every element of searching for the item that it is overpowered, cheap and likely to cheapen the RP elements of the game. I absolutely agree they should be in the game but as they so undermine decent RP people should know what they're getting into.

The option should e there, but you should definately have to work for it. As in, being really high-level, having intimate knowledge of the game, etc. I shouldn't be handed to you, it shouldn't be available early-on, it shouldn't be obvious, aand it shouldn't be discoverable by accident. Ideally, you'd have to conciously make the choice to use whatever the overpowered thing was.

There were plenty of powerful weapons you could obtain fairly easily in Morrowind and it didn't break the game

I fully agree with this ^^

Besides the possibly controversial nature of your example in terms of the forum rules, I think your example (and post) was an excellent one, and I couldn't agree more. However, I would assume that the relative degrees of power most are discussing (in terms of an "overpowered" fantasy hero) are significantly less [than Hellenic deities].

If a limitless creator deity is considered too much power to maintain character, and Zeus and his subordinate gods are considered extremely powerful yet sufficiently flawed as to be characterful, I'd argue that all but the most unlikely TES characters fit in somewhere between magical/supernatural beings and lesser gods - most likely, and fittingly, in the category of "hero" in the classical sense; half-mortal.

The Elder Scrolls lore has plenty of examples of actual demi-gods, and a character with that kind of power is certainly limited enough to remain at risk of defeat or destruction, and so the potential for conflict and character development isn't compromised. Of course this is all from a roleplaying point of view -- it's certainly a more enjoyable discussion from that angle -- where considerations of gameplay and design need not apply at all.

The problem in open-world RPGs is that there are too many ways to "exploit" the game. Once you find out (early in the game) how to get the best weapons and which combat skills are most useful, all the challenges suddenly disappear. I'll use Fallout 3 as an example, because it's Bethesda's last game. I've played it for 100+ hours and had to load game for maybe 5 times. At the beginning, you just have to rob the travelling merchant outside the Megaton, without any consequences. Once you find the Alien Blaster, you character becomes almost invincible. Once you have taken the Grim Reaper perk, you are ridiculously overpowered. By the way, you can raise all your skills to 100 without any problems.

I really hope that Skyrim will be more challenging.

What I said was it was unfair for developers to ship an rpg that forces the player to go out of character to not abuse the system, and that its unfair for the players to go out of their way to find holes in the system and then complain about it, like you know how the developers give people the ability to mod their games...and then people complain about how they can mod themselves unlimited ammo? What's up with that anyway?

I also said that one should be able to become a lich, but after long hours of hard work and there should be downsides to becoming a lich as well. Very few circles would knowingly accept a lich into their group. Fire should also become a very strong weakness of the player, and restoration spells might hurt along with Turn undead spells making the player's character want to flee...maybe it should drain fatigue fast or something. That's what I was saying. There should never just be a god mode, it should be something that brings its own risks and down sides along with the things you gain.

As for this thread in general...there should be very powerful weapons or spells, but the player should have to work for them. Pretty standard, high risk high reward ballance.

It breaks the Role-Playing aspect, not everyone wants to Role-Play and I can respect that but as a Role-Playing Game the game should assume you are Role-Playing until you take action to show otherwise. I guess you don't have to make the dungeons difficult, but they should be far out of the way and not likely to stumbled on accidentally.

What are you defining as role-playing?

That's how they were in Morrowind

I think overpoering is mainly for people who can't use difficulty scaling meter.

Choices and consequences in every way.

I was asking him.

OK, sorry

I wasn't trying to be mean, just wanted him to further explain his comment.